


Daylight Savings

by leftofrevolution



Category: The Dragon Prince (Cartoon)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Gen, The Moonshadow Elves Arrive Five Minutes Early
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-09-21
Updated: 2019-03-30
Packaged: 2019-07-15 00:51:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 7
Words: 24,518
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16052057
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/leftofrevolution/pseuds/leftofrevolution
Summary: Moonrise starts when the sun sets.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * Translation into 中文 available: [夏时令 Daylight Savings](https://archiveofourown.org/works/16147775) by [SoManySpaceShips](https://archiveofourown.org/users/SoManySpaceShips/pseuds/SoManySpaceShips)



> I based Viren's characterization on the first two and a half episodes of Season 1 of The Dragon Prince, because I cannot make his later characterization jive at all with how he is when Harrow is alive. I'm sure there is some reasonable explanation, but until that is given, I'm going to assume possessed by the original Dark Magic sorcerer in later episodes.

He hadn’t expected to see Prince Callum upon exiting the royal chambers.

Of course, he really hadn’t planned his life out much beyond the next five minutes, but Harrow- the _king_ , had in his usual way done an absolutely fantastic job of crushing even _that_ five minutes of planning into a fine dust. Then the screaming had started, so. Truth be told, he hadn’t been expecting much of anything except the imminent and painful demise of his sovereign, but he _knew_ the princes were already supposed to be on their way to the Banther Lodge.

Except here was Prince Callum, standing with a mulish expression on his face directly in the path of a team of Moonshadow Assassins set on regicide.

“I-” began Prince Callum.

Viren had not once cared about what Prince Callum had to say and certainly wasn’t starting now. “ _Get him out of here_ ,” he barked at the nearest Crownguard. Except there was _only one exit_ , which was by design for defensive purposes but incredibly inconvenient when trying to get a child prince out of a kill zone. The Crownguard in question thus grabbed Prince Callum obligingly but then just sort of shrugged in bemused helplessness.

He wasn’t sure why he expected better. The Crownguard, after all, had a history of hiring for martial talent and loyalty instead of something irrelevant like intelligence.

Viren hissed through his teeth before marching towards the nearest window and looking down.

Hay cart. Good enough.

He smashed the windowpane with his staff and gestured at the Crownguard. “Toss him out.” Then he looked at Prince Callum. “I don’t know what you’re still doing here, but take your brother and _go_.”

Prince Callum had to be dragged towards the window, fighting the entire way. He only managed enough breath for one declaration, an angry, righteous, “I know what you did!” before the Crownguard, as ordered, tossed him out the window.

There was a distant, pained groan two seconds later, but no sounds of breaking bones or agonized screaming.

Also good enough. Tonight of all nights, he was willing to settle for adequate.

Soren, who had maintained his post admirably throughout the whole debacle, wrinkled his face in obvious confusion. “… What did you do?”

“So many things,” said Viren, rubbing tiredly at his eyes. “If you’re asking to which Prince Callum was referring, I have no-”

He was interrupted by more screaming.

So the Moonshadow Elves had made it to the second set of guards, then.

Wonderful.

There were only three sets of guards.

And he hadn’t brought either of his Primal Stones with him.

Because he was a total and complete fool, who had thought that of _course_ the king would listen to his plan, that his royal highness’s earlier reticence would just be swept away once he knew, once he _understood_ that there were no limits on Viren’s loyalty. Except he hadn’t gotten that far in his explanation before his majesty decided no explanation would suffice, as if the fact that Viren’s love for his lord was based on actually _knowing_ Harrow—his faults and his hopes and his fears and his frailties, what kept him awake at night, what made him a man and not just a king—instead of based on an abstract ideal meant Viren was _arrogant_ , meant he needed to be reminded of his _place_ -

The point was that he didn’t have either of his Primal Stones with him, or any magical creatures on hand with enough innate magic to stop a cabbage merchant, much less a team of Moonshadow Assassins.

He was the High Mage of Katolis, and he was powerless when faced with the death of- of his king.

Soren’s armor _clinked_ slightly as he shifted, his body language betraying his nervousness even if his face did not.

And, least he forget, the likely death of his son as well.

The screaming had stopped.

That was not a good sign.

There were no good signs anymore.

There wouldn’t even be bad ones.

You didn’t even see Moonshadow Assassins coming. Not on the night of a full moon.

They were invisible, and silent, and they would not stop until they had achieved their vengeance-

Wait.

 _Wait_.

He _was_ a fool.

The Moonshadow Assassins were here to avenge their king. There could be no other reason.

But it had not been Harrow who felled Thunder.

“Dad-” started Soren, obviously gearing himself up for some last minute heartfelt statement—romantic boy, he loved that kind of thing, cried at the end of tragedies like clockwork—but Viren held up a hand to silence him before taking a step forward, ahead of the Crownguard at the top of the stairs.

“ _Dad-_ ” said Soren again, this time with more alarm, but Viren ignored him. He knew what needed to be done.

It was… strangely calming, but he supposed there was some sense in it. He had settled on this destination some hours ago. The path may have changed, but… he’d get there in the end.

And this time, there would be no interference from the king. He’d soundproofed the royal chambers right after Prince Ezran was born (on Queen Sarai’s heartfelt, insistent request), and he’d never been more thankful for that than now.

“Moonshadow Assassins,” he began. He kept his voice low, measured, but he had been King Harrow’s closest- most _preeminent_ adviser for his entire reign as sovereign. He knew how to make himself heard, and in the silence of the night, even a whisper carried like cannon fire. “You are here to avenge your fallen king, the Sky Dragon we called Thunder.

“However, you should be aware that in seeking to slay King Harrow this night, your vengeance is misplaced. King Harrow did not kill Thunder.” He paused, long enough to take a breath.

 “ _Dad_ -!” Soren again. The boy did love to ruin a good speech—between him and his sister, Viren had grown accustomed to memorizing his notes out of despair of any of them making it intact to the podium—but Soren was, in the end, ignorable. He was too good, too loyal a knight. He would not leave his post. Not for something as insignificant as family.

“I did.”

The night air was silent again, for a breath.

But only a breath.

“You led the assault?”

The words came as if a sigh on the wind, except, of course, that there was no wind.

Viren straightened, folded his hands over the pommel of his staff. He raised his chin. “I did not ‘lead’ anything. It was me. Only me. Alone.”

“A single human.”

Incredulous.

“Yes.”

Something about his tone—his certainty—seemed to persuade them, but that was not the end of it, of course.

“He ordered it.”

“No,” Viren countered smoothly. “That is what we _told_ people what happened, to help maintain his legitimacy once the operation proved… popular, in certain circles. In truth, my actions on the Border— _all_ of my actions-” he let the implications of what those actions might be hang in the air, unsaid, “were unsanctioned, and only retroactively condoned under protest.”

Another breath.

“Even if true… what is to stop us from killing you both?”

The tone would be almost curious, if it were not also drenched in bloodlust. Hate of centuries, festering. Rot only recently permitted to boil to the surface.

Viren allowed himself a smile. He knew the feeling well. “Because. You don’t know how I did it, do you? How I killed your dragon king-”

Which was when he was slugged in the side of the head with the hilt of a knife.

He staggered. He fell, or would have, had he not felt the edge of a blade touch lightly against his neck, and found the wherewithal to catch himself against the wall, his staff dropping to the ground with a clatter.

“Dad!”

The sound of a step forward in heavy boots.

No. _No_. The Moonshadow Assassins were already primed for battle. Intervention now could ruin everything.

“ _Hold you post_ , Crownguard.” He allowed himself a breath, but only one. He felt something trickle down his throat to his collarbone. “Your duty… is to the _king_.”

The footsteps stopped.

“And you,” a voice whispered in his ear, “Will not speak of our liege in such a fashion again, _Dragonslayer_.” The word was spat as if a slur. “And we know how you did it. You used _Dark Magic_.”

Viren let his smile curl again across his lips. “And if that explanation is sufficient to satiate your curiosity—or, more importantly, the intelligence needs of your leaders—than feel free to slit my throat here and now.”

Two more breaths passed. Viren felt more wetness slid down to his collarbone.

He was, however, still breathing, however unpleasantly.

“No? Then let me make you a deal. You stay your hand against the king of Katolis this night, and all future nights, for what befell your king and his heir. You promise me this, and I will leave with you quietly, to do with as you wish.”

Another breath.

“You and your life for your king’s.”

“If that’s how you want to phrase it.” His smile twisted, bitter, unbidden, on his face. “I am, after all, his loyal servant.”

Another breath. Always his, never theirs. Did Moonshadow Elves even need to breathe, here under the full moon?

He didn’t know. No human did, all but the most general knowledge about elves long forgotten.

Just one more reason he was glad Thunder was dead.

“Very well.”

He didn’t let himself sag. The Crownguard were watching. His _son_ was watching.

Most importantly, he didn’t want to slit his own throat open on a blade he couldn’t even see. That would end any tentative agreement very quickly.

Not that he had a chance to do much of anything, as only seconds later he was picked up bodily and hurled out the nearest window. Which was the same window he’d ordered Prince Callum tossed out three minutes earlier.

Either the Moonshadow Assassin had aimed his throw very badly or very well, because Viren didn’t even have the opportunity to judge the quality of the hay cart as a landing surface before he cracked his head on the side on the way down.

He allowed himself one more smile before letting the darkness clawing at the edges of his vision to pull him under. It tasted only faintly of blood.

 


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Holy cow, you guys, look at this [gorgeous art](https://leftofrevolution.tumblr.com/post/178472716344/somanyspaceships-this-scene-came-from-a-fun) somanyspaceships drew of the previous chapter (it is _so good_ ).

He woke up face down in the dirt with his hands bound fast together at the small of his back.

It was intensely uncomfortable, the angle pulling on his shoulders and upper arms and the knots just slightly too tight, but it was nothing compared to the sharp pain that shot through his skull when he attempted to turn his head, like someone was attempting to stab through to his brain stem with an ice pick. A blunt one.

Despite himself, he groaned. And the low murmur of voices above him stopped.

But only for a moment.

“The human’s awake,” said one voice, the strange lilting accent marking him as an elf even if the circumstances hadn’t already dictated he be so.

“Obviously,” snapped another, this one… familiar?

Then Viren was rolled roughly onto his back, the boot in his side more resembling a kick than a push. The second the back of his head made contact with the ground, he nearly blacked out again, grey casting a pall over his vision. To call the base of his skull tender would be the worst kind of understatement.

He couldn’t actually see the elves—his eyes were currently refusing to focus, and it was still the night of the full moon besides, the shadows around the assassins commensurately all-encompassing—but that did nothing to stop one of them from throwing water in his face.

“Stay awake,” intoned that same familiar voice, rife with barely suppressed irritation.

Viren had to cough a few times before he could manage, “… Perhaps don’t deal me a head injury,” he coughed again, “if you wish me to remain conscious.” Because it _was_ the elf who had held a blade to his throat outside the royal chambers; the cold anger that underlay every word he uttered was, in retrospect, an obvious tell.

Viren was hauled unceremoniously to his feet by one shoulder before being shoved forward, stumbling badly before he caught his footing. “We’re not carrying you all the way to Xadia. Walk.”

“It would probably be faster for you if you did,” Viren said mildly, before he was shoved again.

“So much for leaving with us quietly,” said a third elf, his voice tinged more than a little bit with humor.

Viren felt himself grit his teeth. “That is what I _offered_ you; what you _wanted_ was me and my life, which is what you’re getting. If you want my silence so badly, feel free to knock me out again. You Moonshadow Elves do so enjoy attacking people who can’t defend themselves, after all.”

He was grabbed by the throat and shoved up against a tree so quickly that he felt the impact before he fully registered the movement. His vision doubled for a worryingly long few seconds—he would be lucky if he escaped this day with only a mild concussion—before uneasily stabilizing again. This close, he could barely make out a pair of glowing green eyes, contracted into pinpricks. “Are you _trying_ to provoke us, Dark Mage?”

Viren smiled thinly. “’Trying?’”

“Calm down, Runaan,” said a fourth elven voice, this one female, from just to Viren’s left. “We need to go. And,” said the fourth voice pointedly, when the named Runaan growled and gave Viren another shove, “We’re getting nowhere in a hurry with a crippled human on foot with his hands tied behind his back.”

“Knocking him out again it is!” said voice number three, and Viren braced himself for another head injury before he felt fingers press tightly against his carotid artery. He had precisely enough time to wonder at the effectiveness of such a technique before he blacked out. Again.

\--*--

The _next_ time he regained consciousness, it was morning, and he couldn’t feel his hands.

He was also face down in the dirt again, but that seemed secondary to the fact that he _couldn’t feel his hands_.

“Human’s awake again,” said voice number one. What little rustling sounds there were ceased immediately.

Viren took in a slow, steadying breath, before saying with as even a tone as he could manage, “Would you mind terribly loosening the bonds around my wrists?”

“We don’t care about your comfort, Dark Mage,” snapped Runaan.

“I don’t know, Runaan,” said the fourth voice. There was the sound of someone crouching at his side. “His hands are turning purple.”

“Pretty sure that’s a bad color for human skin,” said the third voice. “And, uh, as karmic as it might be if we _did_ need to cut his hands off…”

Runaan hissed through his teeth. “ _Fine_. Dashou, untie his hand and rebind them in front of him, but remember to use the _magi vinculum_.”

 _Magi vinculum_. Draconic. Translated, it meant ‘mage binding.’

There were no more than a handful of people in each of the human kingdoms with the potential to channel the Primal Sources. Viren had known in an academic sense that magic was much more common in Xadia—it had to be, with all of its remaining denizens being magical creatures themselves—but the idea that magic _users_ , not just magical beings, were so prevalent that a specific technique—a _named_ technique—had been devised for shackling them was… well.

Intellectually? Exhilarating. Viren couldn’t even begin to extrapolate the implications for both magical theory development and the impact it must have had on Xadian society and infrastructure.

Practically? Horrifying. Natural magic already gave elves an unmistakable edge against the average human. _Directed_ magic, if properly utilized, could slaughter armies.

They knew so little about Xadia. Viren had never felt that fact more acutely than now.

“Of course, Runaan,” said voice number four, interrupting Viren’s train of thought. There was a brief tug on Viren’s wrists, then all of the blood rushed to the ends of his fingers at once.

Viren nearly bit through his tongue in an effort not to scream. He only mostly succeeded.

“Don’t be such a baby,” said voice number three as the so-called Dashou pulled him upright effortlessly before pushing him back against a nearby rock. “If your hands hurt, that means you get to keep them.”

Once sitting—once his vision wasn’t all encompassed by dirt—Viren had to swallow twice around the lump in his throat at the stark scene laid out before him. No forest. No vegetation at all. Just his breath—clearly visible—sheer cliff side less than ten feet to his left, and the inescapable knowledge that they were—somehow, impossibly—already in the mountains.

Which meant they were less than twenty miles from the Border. From Xadia.

From the courts of the elves and dragons. From his inevitable torture and death.

As for the elves themselves, in the light of day, they were… well.

He had seen elves before. He had been to the Border, had fought them. Had killed several. Then more than several. But humans didn’t _see_ Moonshadow Elves. That was sort of the point of them, assassins and illusionists all.

The Moonshadow Elves before him numbered five—which seemed odd, for some reason—and were, as best as he could tell, much like all other elves. Horned, four-fingered, and inhumanly, devastatingly beautiful. It had never been a wonder to Viren why elven slurs for humans tended to center around their baseness, their coarseness, the extent to which _they were not worthy_. To creatures gifted with everything, of course beings that wanted more than they were given deserved nothing but contempt.

They were also purple, which perhaps explained why they had not been immediately alarmed when his hands had turned a similar hue.

Hands which still couldn’t do more than twitch, which meant Dashou faced little resistance when she pulled them in front of his chest and started wrapping them in an elaborate knot that immobilized all his fingers.

“Uh…” said voice number one, which Viren could now identify as the elf with the shortest hair. “Should we… feed him, at some point? What do humans even eat?”

“Food,” said Viren blandly. Now that it had been mentioned, he was, of course, absolutely ravenous—yesterday had been far too hectic for the idea of stopping for a meal to even cross his mind, which meant he hadn’t eaten in over a day and a half—but he wasn’t about to show weakness in front of _elves_.

Well. At least no more weakness than he already had.

“Dead animals,” said the third voice, an elf with skin so purple it bordered on black. “I’m pretty sure they eat dead animals.”

“We’re not,” growled the tallest elf, long hair dangling to cover half his face, “Killing a living creature to _feed a human_.”

“Calm yourself, Pruktha,” said Runaan. “Humans are capable of eating what we do.” He turned and looked at the elf with the shortest hair. “Liyam, we have some extra moonberry juice in the spare pack. If you wish to feed him, use that.”

Liyam blinked. “I thought Rayla-”

The look Runaan sent him stopped Liyam cold. “Do _not_ ,” Runaan pronounced very carefully, “Mention her _name_.”

Suddenly, a number of tiny disparities came together in Viren’s mind at once. The guard who had escaped the assassins two nights ago had described the one who had chased him as short, slight. A round, childish face. None of which described any of the elves before him now.

And Moonshadow Assassin teams traditionally numbered six. Traditions may have changed, but they would not deviate from old custom for an honor killing like avenging their king.

There were not six elves before him now.

Viren shoved himself forward, only failing to make it to his feet because of Dashou’s iron grip on his left wrist. “Where. Is. Your. _Sixth_.”

Runaan stared at him dispassionately. “We have none.”

Viren glared at him. “ _Liar_. If you’ve broken your word-” If they had left one of their own behind to kill Harrow once Viren was gone, if Harrow was dead-

“Will you relax?” said the darkest skinned elf. “Rayla’s just a kid, and she couldn’t kill a glow toad while starving to death in the desert, much less a person. She’s just-”

“Yaeger,” said Runaan. “Stop. Talking.”

Yaeger stopped talking.

“Liyam,” said Runaan. “Feed the Dark Mage. Don’t untie his hands. Don’t _tell_ him anything.”

Liyam nodded mutely.

“Everyone else,” said Runaan. “Form a perimeter. We moved too quickly for the humans from the castle to follow us, but they might have a way to send word ahead, and we will _not_ be caught unawares again.”

The three other elves nodded and fanned out without a word, Dashou releasing Viren’s wrist to hop down the cliff side while Yaeger jumped up on the closest high rock outcropping and Pruktha disappeared around a bend, respectively, while Runaan himself sat down on the cliff edge, his face noticeably drawn.

“So,” Viren said mildly as Liyam pulled off his pack and started digging through its contents, “Do you normally bring your children on assassination missions? Is that your form of bonding activity?”

“We have no children,” said Liyam, the words spoken as if by rout. “Only weapons.” Then Liyam scowled. “She’s fifteen anyway, she was _supposed_ to be ready.”

Runaan either wasn’t listening or was pointedly ignoring them, as he didn’t even twitch at the verboten discussion of the mysterious Rayla.

“Fifteen,” said Viren archly. “ _Truly_ an august age.”

Liyam pulled out a bottle filled with red liquid with more of a yank than necessary. “Old enough to be gifted with her blades.”

Viren raised an eyebrow. “Really.” He briefly paused. “When my daughter turned fifteen, I gave her-”

“Let me guess, a pretty dress and something nice for her hair?” Liyam sniffed, his voice practically dripping with disdain. “You humans, you coddle your children into the grave. It’s no wonder you’re all so weak.”

“… I was going to say books and a ten pound bag of beans.” Soren had been the one to give her jewelry. He’d made a point of emphasizing that the snake bracelet made her look ‘freakin’ badass,’ whatever that meant.

(Viren had waited another year before gifting her with one of his Sky Primal Stones, a befitting coming of age present for the future High Mage of Katolis.

In truth, he would have given it to her earlier if she had stopped trying to steal it from him for five minutes, but never let it be said that he wasn’t occasionally fueled by spite.

… He was never going to see his children again, was he.)

Liyam blinked, the disdain giving way to confusion, some of his earlier baffled affability making its way back onto his face. “… Beans? Is that a human euphemism for something?”

“No.”

“… Human tradition?”

“No.”

“… Favorite food?”

“They were kafay beans.”

Liyam’s face scrunched up in distaste. Apparently the plant grew in Xadia as well. “Is… that… human… food?”

“It’s a weed.” Albeit a rare one that only grew in the far south.

“So are dandelions,” piped in Yaeger from his seat on the outcropping. “But the shoots are quite tender if-”

“You’re supposed to be keeping watch, Yaeger,” said Runaan in carefully measured tones, apparently listening in after all. “So why aren’t you?”

“Because this job is boring?” Yaeger wilted under the weight of Runaan’s silence. “… But important. And necessary. And I will get back to doing it. Right now.”

Runaan levered himself up gracefully from his seat on the cliff side before turning to look at Viren. His gaze could almost be considered curious if it weren’t for the tight set to his mouth. “So you think we should be gifting our children with frivolities and novelty items, instead of the tools and skills they need to survive?”

Well, that painted an even bleaker picture of Moonshadow Elf culture than Viren had read about in his books. Oh, pardon him, his ‘frivolities.’

Of course, what could he expect of a people who called their children weapons. “Is Xadia such a harsh place that your offspring die if they stop for long enough to read a novel?”

Runaan’s eyes narrowed. “You know nothing of us.”

“Obviously,” Viren drawled. “If I did, I wouldn’t be having to ask _questions_ , would I.”

“By the moon,” said Yaeger, almost admiring, though his eyes stayed fixed on the horizon, “You’re a cocky bastard, aren’t you. Though I supposed you’d have to be, to slay an Archdragon.”

Runaan whirled on Yaeger, actually baring his teeth. “Do _not_ give that act of _murder_ such dignity.”

Viren straightened indignantly. “Murder? _Murder_? He was an enemy combatant in an ongoing crusade to keep us imprisoned in lands completely bereft of magic, of our _heritage_. He killed _thousands_ of us for the mere temerity of even approaching the Border, many of them civilians, civilian _families_ , with _children_. Do you want to talk about murder? What about that? What about your plan to kill _my_ king in his chambers while he slept?”

“You sure are self-righteous for a Dark Mage,” said Yaeger.

“Says the assassin,” sneered Viren.

Runaan, for his part, just straightened and turned away, all emotion again locked away. “Liyam. Feed him. Then we’re leaving. I want to be over the Border by noon.”

“I cannot hike twenty miles in five hours,” said Viren, even as Liyam fumbled—as much as an elf was capable—the glass bottle and held it up to Viren’s lips.

Viren nearly refused it out of principle. Then he remembered principle was why the previous evening had nearly ended with Harrow being stabbed to death in his bedroom, and opened his mouth.

Moonberry juice was tangy, sweet and sour all at once, lingering pleasantly on his tongue even after he swallowed. He hadn’t even noticed how light-headed he had felt—how his limbs were shaking—until the idea of standing up stopped making him want to vomit, and that was just after a few sips. A few more, and his vision had nearly cleared up entirely. (But only nearly.)

It was, in short, the most amazing thing he ever tasted. Of course. What _about_ elves wasn’t effortlessly perfect.

Runaan did not seem to notice the revival taking place behind him, or perhaps he simply didn’t care, as he still didn’t deign to look at Viren as he replied, “You don’t have a choice.”


	3. Chapter 3

He could not, in fact, hike twenty miles in five hours. He barely made it two at the speed the elves were setting before his left knee seized up and nearly caused him to trip and fall off the mountain path, his sudden and possibly fatal descent only arrested by Liyam’s grip on his right elbow.

Honestly, he was surprised it had held out as long as it did. His left knee had been less than reliable for decades; on bad days, it was a victory to make it up a single flight of stairs with the thing without his staff. He hadn’t made it so far as this _sans_ support since before Claudia was born.

The Moonshadow Elves, however, were not similarly impressed.

“Well,” sighed Yaeger, “I suppose this is what we get for trying to haul an old, crippled human across a mountain range.”

Viren glared at him as best he could without making it obvious how much of his weight he was leaning on his makeshift elven armrest. “I’m _forty_.”

There was a moment of silence.

“Wow,” said Yaeger. “Humans do _not_ age well.”

Viren clenched his jaw against the pain rather than snap back at Yaeger—it was becoming increasingly obvious that particular elf enjoyed nothing more than buzzing about being a nuisance—and Runaan appeared to ignore the commentary entirely. “Our timeline doesn’t allow us to be back in the capital past sunset tomorrow. Options?”

“We’re already worn out, and it’s still less tiring to drag him along than carry him,” said Dashou pragmatically. “I say we splint his knee and keep on going.”

Runaan nodded. “Agreed. Pruktha?”

Without a word, Pruktha knelt down by Viren and slung off his pack before taking out some bandages and a pair of short branches strapped to the outside. He pulled Viren’s leg straight with a forward yank on his left ankle—Viren staggered and put even more of his weight on Liyam as the jerking motion caused a sharp pain to shoot up his leg—before bracing the branches on either side of Viren’s knee with one hand as he knotted the bandages tightly around it with the other.

All told, only about twenty seconds passed before Pruktha pushed himself again to his feet and turned away. “Ready.”

“Good,” said Runaan. “Liyam, you will take the first mile. Then Dashou, Yaeger, Pruktha, and myself, before starting the rotation over again. We’re not taking another break until we’ve made it to the Emerald Grove.”

\--*--

Viren was lucky. He was wrong about how far they were from the Border. Even taking into account that they had swung around to avoid the territories patrolled by the Standing Battalion and the various small detours they had to make around the obstacles too troublesome to just carry him over, it wasn’t twenty miles until they were in sight of the river of magma that delineated where the human kingdoms gave way to Xadia.

It was eleven. Which was still about six miles after Viren’s left leg stopped working entirely, every other step causing the agony to crawl just slightly further up his leg until he had to choose between no longer using his left leg at all or risk the paralyzing pain making its way to his spine.

He chose the former. Some of the elves took their temporary role as crutch more graciously than others.

He was in fact being passed from Pruktha to Runaan—the least and second least gracious, respectively—when the smell of sulfur first made itself known.

“Thank the moon, the sun _and_ the stars,” Yaeger crowed, making his way with only a few jumps to the nearest high point. “We’re nearly home, _amici_.”

“We’re nearly to Xadia,” corrected Dashou. “Not quite the same thing.”

“And here I thought you Xadians were one big happy family,” hissed Viren through gritted teeth, Pruktha not being terribly careful when he pried off Viren’s grip before Runaan stepped in his stead. For the ostensible healer of the group, he had the soft touch of a rampaging bull.

Or of an elf who wasn’t particularly fond of humans, Viren supposed.

“Oh, we are,” said Yaeger cheerfully. “What’s a little stabbing between cousins?”

“Uh, painful?” said Liyam, his eyes darting about from his post about twenty feet further up the mountain trail.

“Avoidable,” said Runaan tersely, crouching so he could sling Viren’s right arm about his neck. The fact that Viren’s hands were still bound together in front of him didn’t make the maneuver any less awkward, and like with Pruktha, Runaan’s small height advantage meant Runaan was left slightly stooping even when Viren straightened to his full height. “Which is why we’re not stopping here.”

“That and the humans with sharp sticks,” said Yaeger, sliding down from his perch.

“Humans don’t come here,” said Pruktha. “Too steep.”

“Sometimes there are scout patrols,” said Dashou, making her way to the front. “We can’t be careless.”

Which they weren’t, of course. For all of Yaeger and Liyam’s occasional unnecessary chatter, even to Viren’s untrained eye it was obvious the team had been working together for some time, each of them taking their positions without so much as a glance at Runaan, their eyes constantly scanning the terrain around them. The unseen Rayla aside, all of the elves were too experienced in their roles to let themselves be caught unaware by something as plebian as enemy soldiers.

Which was why when they began crossing the river, making their way cautiously across a narrow, natural stone bridge, it managed to catch absolutely everyone off guard when the Lava Wyrm burst out of the magma and nearly bit Yaeger’s head off.

If he had been a human, Yaeger would have died then and there. As it was, with usual elven preternatural reflexes he threw himself flat and rolled, the Lava Wyrm passing harmlessly overhead.

Well. Almost harmlessly.

Even sixty feet back at the base of the bridge, through a haze of smoke and ash, Viren could see Yaeger’s face blanch as a few drops of magma splattered down his right flank. The elf made it to the other side, forward momentum from his jump bridging the gap, but once there he seemed to have trouble doing anything more complicated than breathing even as he weakly waved off assistance from both Liyam and Pruktha.

Much easier to discern was the utter collapse of the bridge as the Lava Wyrm unceremoniously fell on it. Leaving Dashou and Runaan—and thus Viren, by proxy—stranded on the western side. And also standing mere feet from what was apparently a hungry Lava Wyrm’s hunting grounds.

“That wasn’t here last time!” Liyam shouted across the river.

“No shit, Liyam!” Dashou shouted back, the most emotion Viren had seen from her thus far. Her usual unruffled calm had returned to her face when she turned to Runaan, though it was hard to ignore the tightness around her eyes. “We should retreat and find another way across.”

“That won’t help,” said Viren. “Lava Wyrms can burrow through cooled magma at a rate faster than a grown man can run, and it’s sensed us now.”

Dashou’s eyes widened, even as Runaan dragged Viren back, bellowing as he did, “Retreat immediately! We’ll meet you at the Emerald Grove!”

“No Lava Wyrm has ever been spotted that’s more than ten feet long, and our blades can’t pierce through _that_ plate,” said Dashou, watching as Liyam and Pruktha scrambled up the slope on the opposite side, Liyam taking the lead before turning to help Pruktha hoist Yaeger up the rest of the way. “That thing has to be nearly thirty.”

“Believe me,” said Viren, as he watched the magma river bubble ominously, “I am _heartily_ aware.”

“Lava Wyrms can’t sense us from below ground if we’re not moving, but we can’t just stand here forever,” said Dashou, this time to Runaan. “Even ignoring out timeline, we don’t know how badly Yaeger is hurt, and Liyam and Pruktha won’t be able to escape that thing’s territory without being attacked if they have to carry Yaeger with them.”

“I’m open to ideas,” Runaan said with a grunt as he apparently gave up on the idea of dragging Viren anywhere at speed and just bodily picked him up before throwing him over his shoulders. It was a highly disorienting angle, but at the moment Viren was too distracted to worry about anything but not being dropped.

“I know the step pattern Lava Wyrms associate with wounded prey,” said Dashou. “I can lure it away, while you get the human across and escape with the others.”

“… Lava Wyrms can move faster than elves as well,” said Runaan. “You will almost certainly die.”

Dashou smiled, sadly, and clapped Runaan on his arm. “My old friend, you know as well as I that we are already dead. It would be my honor if this end meant the moon would shine upon you and yours once again.

“So please, g-”

Unfortunately, Lava Wyrms were not sapient, and had no sense for the dramatic.

It was only due to the vibration of the cooled magma under their feet that the two elves had enough notice to throw themselves in opposite directions as the Lava Wyrm erupted out of the ground beneath them.

Dashou landed neatly and rolled. Runaan, for his part, landed on Viren, their only saving grace being that Runaan’s jump had ended with them behind a small outcropping of rocks, protecting them from the magma splatter as the Lava Wyrm screeched its displeasure and burrowed itself again underground.

Dashou had the wherewithal to enact her plan immediately even with the interruption, dashing some fifty feet away before allowing herself to almost comically stagger, imitating with fair skill the gait of a Magmaroo with a broken leg.

The only problem was, the Lava Wyrm had seen him and Runaan when it surfaced. It knew exactly where to find them, and they were much, much closer.

It was not, Viren thought distantly, the way he had wanted to go, eaten by a Lava Wyrm.

He’d once had vague aspirations of never dying at all, but in more recent years he’d contented himself with the thought of passing away peacefully in his sleep some non-trivial number of decades in the future, surrounded by his children and their children in turn, a respected, widely published scholar of magic, after having gotten to punch Harrow in the face at least once.

(Not hard. But definitely in the face.)

Somewhere along the line (that somewhere being late yesterday afternoon), he’d apparently decided that being tortured to death in a Xadian dungeon would be a decent consolation prize as long as it meant Harrow survived to see the next morning. Because he was apparently a sentimental idiot.

Nowhere in his calculations had he anticipated being consumed whole by a massive armored crocodile. For one thing, Lava Wyrms were usually a little too small to pursue humans as prey. For another, they were very stupid, and there was something undignified about-

Wait. They were stupid.

They were _very_ stupid.

And Viren was less than ten feet from a flowing magma river.

“Untie me!”

Runaan stared at him blearily, a small trickle of blood winding its way along his hairline. Apparently Viren’s body had not completely managed to cushion his fall. “What?”

Viren held his hands out in front of him “Untie me! Cut the ropes!”

Runaan’s eyes narrowed, some sharpness returning to his gaze. “Why would I-”

It was hard to gestured dramatically to the ground when he couldn’t even move his fingers, but Viren either got his point across or the rumbling beneath them was convincing enough on its own, as Runaan cut himself off in favor of drawing one of his blades and slashing through Viren’s bonds with his right hand before shoving Viren away from him with his left, heaving himself back over the outcropping as the Lava Wyrm, predictably, exploded from the rock where they had been crouching moments before.

Extremely predictably. Lava Wyrms were ambush predators, and not clever ones. Out of magma flows, they always attacked and retreated in straight, vertical lines.

Which meant Viren knew exactly where to aim.

\--*--

Viren did not have the good fortune to possess his own Earth Primal Stone, but his first teacher had, so he had touched Earth magic young. He had studied the foundation spells associated with Earth magic’s domains, knew enough basic principles to craft simple spell variations with only a bit of trial and error. The feeling of Earth magic flowing through him had always been… grounding, when he was a boy, for all he was loathe to use one of Claudia’s puns. With an Earth Primal Stone, you always knew where you stood (oh dragons, even staring down death he couldn’t escape them).

Channeling Earth magic through an active volcano was nothing like that at all. He wasn’t directing the unyielding, unperturbed strength of a mountain now; he was attempting to guide the course of Earth in its most furious guise, to convince it of the wisdom of _boundaries_ , of _solidity_.

It was not easily convinced. He could feel its ferocity wrapping itself around the base of his spine, its desire to _move_ , to _consume_ nearly all encompassing. So often Earth magic was conflated with _life_ , but that was only the half of it. The Earth was also where things returned once that life _ended_.

As it was about to end now, either his or the Lava Wyrm’s.

Fortunately for him, while the Wyrm may have been a magical creature of Earth, the Primal Sources had never made a secret of loving their mages more.

Thus it was only through a slight haze of burning agony—his eyes filled with sulfur, his mouth with ash, his left knee long since gone completely numb—that he sketched a rune in the air and coughed, barely coherent, “Perfigo!” And three spikes of volcanic glass shot out of the ground just in time for the Lava Wyrm to impale itself upon them through the force of its own weight.

\--*--

It did not die immediately. There was a lot of shrieking, which was unpleasant, and even more thrashing, which was actively dangerous considering it was happening only a few feet from Viren’s nose, but considering both how long it had been since he’d slept and the sheer extent to which his knee had seized up, Viren found himself incapable of doing more than watching blankly even as a splatter of magma landed inches from his feet.

The Lava Wyrm was still thrashing ten seconds later when Viren found himself hauled upright and away with a hand under his left arm, Runaan steadily cursing under his breath. Some of it seemed directed at Viren; most of it did not.

Even Dashou got a glare as she trotted over, though it apparently wasn’t impressive enough to do more than elicit a skeptical squint before she started pulling another length of rope out of her pack. “Your eyes aren’t focusing properly.”

“Nothing to be done now,” growled Runaan, coughing nearly as badly as Viren as he did. “How far are we from the next crossing?”

“Without running afoul of the Standing Battalion? A mile to the south,” said Dashou. “About three miles’ walk if we want to avoid climbing-”

“No,” said Viren, who was currently only upright through the power of Runaan’s ridiculous grip strength.

Both elves turned and looked at him. “We don’t have a choice,” said Runaan, though his usual simmering anger could barely be heard under the thick overlay of fatigue.

“Leave my hands free for thirty more seconds and we will,” said Viren.

Dashou stared at him dubiously, but after a second Runaan just grunted and started dragging him back towards the river, dropping his arm—and thus Viren himself—just a few paces from the shore. “Aim a rune at either of us and I’ll chop your hand off.”

Viren ignored him, first to catch himself before he either landed badly on his knee or cut up his hands even further than he already had on the lava rock, then to take a steadying breath as a wave of sulfur hit him in the face and brought back all of the nausea he had spent the last few minutes doing his best to disregard.

Then he took another breath, then another, reaching once more into the volcano.

There was no spell he knew for this, no simple path forged by his forebears. Earth magic in general was difficult for its permanence; it stood alone amongst the Primal Forces for the mark it left upon the world. A breeze came and went, the tides rose and receded, each day the moon and the stars gave way to the sun as the sun gave way in turn, but flora and fauna remained until they died, and the mountains were forever. To ask Earth to change was to enact something eternal, and the Earth would not do so for just anyone.

And so he looked into the mountain’s molten heart, and said, _I’m tired._

It was, to say the least, an understatement. Tired? He was _exhausted_ , shaking from it, the vitality granted by the moonberry juice sapped away to nothing somewhere around mile three. He was kneeling on rock so hot it blistered his skin through his clothes, and yet it was the idea of having to stand up _again_ that made the bottom drop out of his stomach.

The mountain’s response was immediate, a suggestion: _Sleep_. As it had not been able to, for so long.

It was not natural for a volcano to burn for thousands of years. Decades, perhaps, but the Border was magical in nature, Earth magic violently twisted to cauterize a scar across the continent that had never been allowed to heal.

It predated the exile. It predated everything. And while the spell that fueled it was self-sustaining, an Ouroboros of rage constantly feeding upon itself, the mountain itself knew that something was wrong.

So it was perhaps with less difficulty than he might have had otherwise that Viren sketched in his mind the shape he wanted. One small piece of the mountain finally being allowed to settle. An arch that would allow Viren, in just a short time, to rest as well.

And because the Primal Sources loved nothing more than their mages—to be with them, to move through them, to listen when they called—when Viren asked, the mountain answered.

A single word etched in the air before him, and the magma stretched out of the river in one graceful curve before coming to rest on the far side, instantly cooling into dark, smooth glass.

\--*--

Liyam, Yaeger, and Pruktha were waiting for them just a hundred feet up the slope, either not having made it that far due to Yaeger’s injuries or just having ignored Runaan outright when he told them to flee.

Based on Runaan’s narrowed eyes, he suspected the latter.

Based on Yaeger’s grin—a bit pinched around the edges, but with his usual obnoxious cheer—he didn’t care at all what Runaan suspected or not. “I gotta say, I forgot that Dark Mage could also mean, you know, mage mage. That was some pretty spellwork.”

Viren stared at him dully, having been less assisted across the bridge by Dashou than dragged.

Undeterred, Yaeger wiggled his fingers towards his side. “Any chance you could fix me up?”

“No,” said Viren and Runaan simultaneously, though Runaan spat as he did and looked immediately disgusted. “The human is staying bound until the capital. Your injuries can wait until the Grove.”

And just like that, they were moving again, Pruktha taking the lead, then Dashou with Viren, then Liyam helping along Yaeger, with Runaan guarding the rear.

Even so, Liyam was clearly audible as he whispered to Yaeger, “I didn’t know humans could cast spells like that. It was...”

Runaan snarled. Whatever earlier weariness he might have felt seemed wiped away, as there was no trace of it in his voice as he hissed, “Humans. They were given everything, but it will never be enough for them. They would bleed us dry to squeeze the magic from our corpses. _That_ is why we banished them from Xadia.

“Remember _that_ , next time you see a human cast.”


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If anyone wants a refresher on what the non-Runaan elves actually look like, [here](https://leftofrevolution.tumblr.com/post/178809917459/bbtree-names-to-be-revealed-later-good-cuz) they are (clockwise from upper left, Dashou, Yaeger, Liyam, and Pruktha).

The Border transition on the western side was gradual, the massive trees of the forest giving way to the scrub of the steppes and mountains, which gave way in turn to the black rock and burning smoke that heralded the boundary slashed between the human lands and Xadia.

The Border transition on the eastern side was rather more dramatic. The line where the Borderlands ended was quite literally a line, one step taking Viren from dark, blasted wasteland into the most verdant jungle he had ever seen, every frond, flower, and creature an oversized, resplendent riot of color.

He could actually feel Dashou’s shoulders relax under him as she took in a deep breath, then exhaled, tension flowing from her like a river. “Runaan…”

“It’s still ten minutes’ walk to the Emerald Grove,” said Runaan, still in the back. “And the Low Duke’s forces have been spotted skulking along this trail in recent weeks. Do not let us be blindsided again.” But even his voice lacked its usual edge, the wire strung taut between his shoulder blades finally allowed to loosen.

Which seemed strange, as this was the most unnerving place Viren had been in his entire life.

He had traveled into Xadia before—even Thunder and his legions of elves had not been able to thoroughly patrol the full two thousand miles of the Border, and there were few enough magical reagents to be found west of it that the dangers of a journey east were always worth the risk—but he had always been careful to skirt the margins, to cross only where no elf or dragon cared enough to go. The Frost Wilds. The Midnight Desert. The Fall.

Xadia, to him, had always been a place of desolation. Beautiful, undeniably—the dunes of the Midnight Desert were so black they absorbed light, and the skies churned purple with every dawn—but empty, and so bereft of life that the few small pockets of magical creatures to be found shone like lanterns on a moonless night.

Whereas the jungle blazed like the core of the sun. A Primal Source as much as the volcano, but diffused all around him, near impossible to grasp but even more difficult to disregard. Every patch of moss, every blade of grass, every bird and beast—every _insect_ —glimmering with magic, the air itself charged with a power he could feel in his lungs every time he took a breath. A humming, so deep it didn’t even register on an audible level, just a feeling that proved beyond his ability to ignore.

He felt light-headed almost immediately. He made it approximately twenty steps past that before his remaining functioning leg decided it was time for it to also buckle underneath him, and despite Dashou’s grip he still nearly managed to fall on his face.

“For the love of…” growled Runaan, striding up behind them and hauling him back upright. “Wait to collapse until we get to the Grove, human.”

Viren blinked at the elf hazily. Runaan growled at him again, and when that failed to elicit any more reaction, slapped Viren hard across the face. “Stay. _Awake-_ ”

“Uh, Runaan?” interrupted Liyam’s voice weakly. “I don’t think… you’re going to want to do that again.”

Runaan twisted to look at Liyam. “What are you talking…” he trailed off, then pursed his lips into a thin line.

It was only then that Viren heard (through only a slight ringing in his ears, only partially from the slap) what all of the elves apparently had already, which was nothing.

The jungle—all of the buzzing, rustling, and occasional shrieking that marked a living forest—had gone absolutely silent.

“… We’re still half a mile from the Grove,” said Dashou. “That shouldn’t have…”

“It didn’t,” said Pruktha. “But the Prism Jungle is heavily Earth aspected.”

Yaeger squinted all around him, then turned his head to squint at Viren instead before giving a half-strangled laugh. “Well damn, guess that explains why the Earth mage is Primal high off his gourd.”

“We’ve barely been here a minute,” said Dashou. “I’ve never seen any mage affected this badly in less than a day.”

“Primal high?” said Viren. Or, well, tried, the words coming out a slurred mess from his suddenly uncooperative tongue.

Still, the thought must have been conveyed, since Yaeger just gave him another confused squint before saying, “… Maybe you call it something else? Magic buildup?”

Viren shook his head, which proved a terrible idea when it set the world spinning slowly along a ninety degree axis. He would have tightened his grip further on Dashou if he were able, but his arms had gone nearly as unresponsive as his legs.

It was hot. It was very hot. It had been hard to notice past everything else, but it was. He should have expected that, considering he was in a jungle, but somehow he had thought instead it would get better once they left the Borderlands.

It had not, the dry, poisonous heat of the volcano just being replaced by a humidity that left Viren feeling like he was melting instead his (thick, woolen, unimaginably awful) coat.

 “Well that… kinda explains the onset speed,” said Yaeger. “First times are the worst, my aunt always says.”

“Concussion. Hunger. Sleep deprivation. Exhaustion. Dehydration. Also decrease resistance,” said Pruktha, waving a hand slowly in front of Viren’s face. Viren didn’t know what reaction the elf was expecting, but before long the healer glanced at Runaan and shook his head. “He won’t be walking any further. I can carry him.”

Runaan gave a terse nod. He did not look relaxed anymore.

\--*--

For all that the elves had to have been awake at least as long as he had, Pruktha exhibited no strain whatsoever to having Viren slung across his shoulders, striding through the jungle more easily than Viren had seen most men traverse similar terrain completely unencumbered. Liyam was a little bit slower helping Yaeger along, but even they were loping along comfortably, as if on a morning stroll instead of sneaking through what Viren surmised was contested territory after over a day without sleep.

Extremely humid contested territory. Sweltering. And he could still feel that _humming_ , in his chest, right underneath his skin. When combined with the scratch of his coat around his collar, he rather wanted to tear his own skin off.

Fortunately he wasn’t given very long to contemplate this, as the trees around them steadily shifted down to the cooler end of the color spectrum to settle around a dark, vibrant green. The sounds of the jungle retreated again, though never fully, as Dashou in the lead jogged silently ahead around a break in the foliage before popping back up and gesturing everyone along. “Grove is clear.”

Pruktha followed immediately, pushing past a peculiarly dense tangle of vines to a small spring surrounded by a surprising lack of undergrowth, only a few small bushes covered with overripe berries. And Viren had no idea what Dashou had meant by ‘clear,’ as it was absolutely swarming with magical creatures.

Insects. Birds. Rodents. Reptiles. Amphibians. Ungulates. And—most surprising, considering the abundance of everything else—predators. Large ones. One that looked rather like a tiger—if tigers were bright green, possessed tufted ears, and stood about eight feet at the shoulder—stopped cleaning itself long enough to look at them.

Pruktha seemed to neither notice nor care about what should have been a blood bath, as he ignored it all completely in favor of walking over to the spring and dropping Viren beside it. “Drink.”

Viren considered being alarmed by the tiger sitting and staring at them less than ten feet away, but he decided that could wait until he- well, he tried to just put his mouth in the water, but his coordination was completely shot at the moment, so he ended up dunking his entire head instead. The sensation was actually extremely refreshing, so he didn’t bother to correct as he more or less just opened his mouth and swallowed.

This lasted for about seven seconds, or until Pruktha abruptly pulled Viren upright by the collar of his coat and held the edge of one of his blades to the side of Viren’s neck.

Viren froze. He still had a half-healed cut across his throat from the last time an elf had put a blade there (all of eighteen hours ago).

“For fuck’s sake, Pruktha, it wouldn’t kill you to explain yourself once in a while,” said Yaeger from somewhere behind them.

Pruktha twitched a little like it might, before he rumbled out, “Water intoxication. Heat exhaustion.” Then he started to cut off Viren’s coat.

The elf had sliced a rent from the collar all the way down Viren’s left sleeve before Viren’s thought processes caught up with the proceedings enough for him to say, “You could have just had me take it off. This coat was-” He nearly lost his train of thought halfway through, not because of anything in particular except that it was very hot, and the air was still shimmering oddly, and he kept on feeling like he should be coughing something, “… very- expensive.”

Pruktha ignored him in favor of starting to cut through the underside of Viren’s sleeve as well, the edge carving through the fabric like- well, like a blade that was ridiculously sharp, he supposed.

Should he be- something? Upset?

It _was_ a nice coat. He liked the coat. The stitching was beautiful, it fit him perfectly, and it kept him warm (because no matter what time of year it was, castles were drafty and cold and horrible, and that went doubly so when you spent half of your time in the basement).

“It’s already ruined, though.” Liyam, bizarrely, sounded like he was trying to be comforting. “It’s kind of… black. And the back is _really_ charred.”

“Well then by all means, continue cutting my clothes off.” His tone was shooting for acerbic, but even to his own ears he just sort of sounded disoriented. Which… wasn’t inaccurate.  A Moonshadow Assassin was holding a blade less than a quarter inch from his left kidney, there was a green tiger staring at him, his left leg from the hip down had lost all feeling so long ago that he was beginning to suspect permanent nerve damage, he was hungry, thirsty, feverish, concussed, hadn’t slept in something like thirty-three hours, felt even more strung out than he had after visiting an opium den with Harrow when they were sixteen...

And his hands hurt, probably because of the cuts and burns all over the palms of them. Somehow he had forgotten about that one. Which was odd, because they actually stung quite badly, now that he thought about it.

The stinging was not alleviated when Pruktha finished cutting him out of his coat, tossed it to the side like so much refuse, then grabbed Viren by his right wrist before loosening the ropes entangling his hands, leaving only his wrists bound together.

“Pruktha…” Runaan’s voice sounded like a warning.

“Infection. I won’t let go,” said Pruktha, which was apparently enough of an explanation to satisfy Runaan, who audibly relaxed his posture somewhere behind them.

Pruktha then spent about thirty seconds glancing about—his fingers still tight around Viren’s wrist—before pulling a handful of bright orange berries off one of the nearby bushes and rubbing them vigorously into Viren’s right palm.

This did not help with the stinging. The stinging in fact increased dramatically, enough for the pain to break through the daze that had come over him since entering the jungle and cause him to try and (ineffectually) jerk away, cursing. “What are you-”

“Cleaning,” said Pruktha, though strangely not to Viren; he instead looked up, then said again, more firmly, “Cleaning. Second degree burns, debris from volcano. Pureberries. Without, infection. _Not_ hurting.”

What the- “Of course it hurts, you clumsy-”

“He’ll stop if you ask him to,” said Runaan. “We can drag you as easily to the capital with sepsis as without.”

Viren turned his head to look at Runaan, to see the elf rubbing those orange berries into his own palms, and Liyam beside Runaan smearing more of the same into Yaeger’s right side where the magma spray had caught him. Runaan’s face was set in its usual tight cast, and Yaeger’s usual grin had turned so rictus it was disturbing to look at, but neither seemed to be questioning the wisdom of plastering fruit over their open wounds.

Viren settled with ill grace back to facing Pruktha, who had not moved and was staring at him expectantly. “Where I come from,” Viren said to him, “Berries this color tend to be poisonous.”

“No poisonous plants in the Grove,” said Pruktha, who apparently took Viren’s words as tacit permission to continue, as he grabbed another handful of the berries off the bush and started in on Viren’s left hand as well. After about a minute of agony that steadily escalated until Viren was biting his lower lip so hard that he tasted blood, Pruktha shoved both of his hands into the spring, splashing them around until there was no trace left of the orange berry juice. Pruktha then leaned towards a nearby tree and pulled off a handful of ghostly pale leaves before crushing them in his right hand, then looked again at Viren’s palms.

“Can I bite down on something first this time,” Viren rasped.

Pruktha glanced up at his face, then frowned, before reaching up and running the pad of his right thumb—as covered in leaf pulp as the rest of his hand—over Viren’s bottom lip where he had bitten through it. The pain faded to nothing almost immediately. “Soothleaf,” said Pruktha to Viren’s questioning look, turning back to Viren’s palms and slathering the leaf pulp over them in a thick layer.

Once he was done, Pruktha grabbed a few more leaves off the tree and held them up to Viren’s mouth. “Knee,” said Pruktha impatiently when Viren stared at him incredulously.

Oh, of course. Naturally this unprocessed foliage acted as an all-purpose painkiller and could be applied topically or ingested. How foolish of him to be skeptical.

Well, fine. As if there weren’t one thousand easier ways for the elves to kill him other than poisoning. Viren opened his mouth, and Pruktha lay three of the leaves on his tongue. “Chew,” said Pruktha. Pruktha spent the next few minutes wrapping Viren’s palms in bandages before binding up his fingers again with rope. Only when he was done did he stand up and walk over to Yaeger, kneeling down by the injured elf’s side.

Not being in pain, Viren found, was surprisingly tiring. Despite everything else wrong with the situation—still filthy, still hungry, still tied up, still feeling like the world was just slightly tilted off to the side, still- yes, there was still a tiger, and it was still staring at him—he really wanted nothing more than to lie down next to the spring and sleep. But before that, he did want to know “Is it safe here?”

“The Grove is always safe,” said Pruktha.

\--*--

Viren woke up to a throbbing knee and the tiger curled up next to him, a solid line of green fur between him and the elves. He actually felt his heart seize in his throat—the creature was so big it could bite him in half without fully opening its mouth—before Liyam stepped around the tiger carelessly and crouched by him with a cheerful, “You’re awake! Want some sunberry juice?”

“… How is that different from moonberry juice, exactly?” Viren asked, unable to take his eyes off the tiger.

“It’s made of sunberries,” said Liyam, popping out the cork. “Yaeger found some growing at the top of the canopy. And Pruktha mixed in a little bit of soothleaf gel, I guess.” He followed Viren’s gaze to the tiger. “Baryim’s being friendlier than usual. He must like you.”

“To his own detriment,” said Runaan, stripped to the waist and washing on the other side of the spring. “He would murder and consume you in an instant if given the chance.” This was clearly addressed to the tiger.

The tiger seemed unimpressed. He yawned—his mouth wider across than Viren’s shoulders—then he stretched once before giving Viren a careful—but still exceedingly rough—lick across the face before turning and disappearing into the trees surrounding the Grove.

“… I have no idea what is happening,” said Viren. Being a mage was no protection against magical creatures, as the incident with the Lava Wyrm proved. There was no reason for the tiger to have not eaten him while he slept.

“The Emerald Grove is Earth sacred,” said Dashou, sitting on a rock nearby and sipping on her own bottle of golden nectar. “Specifically towards the life domain. Nothing can die here. Anyone who even attempts violence is forcibly ejected and barred from the Grove forever. Magical creatures of the other Sources avoid this place completely, and Earth creatures are… pacified.

“It was neutral ground, once.”

The words were said indifferently, but Runaan’s head shot up from his ablutions as if he’d been stabbed. “Not another word, Dashou.”

“What does it matter?” said Dashou, taking another sip from her bottle. “He has no one to tell.” Still, Runaan continued to stare at her, and Dashou eventually glanced away and said, as if she wasn’t changing topics entirely, “It won’t be another hour until sunset.”

This was, to Viren’s surprise, true. The sun had already fallen near-completely behind the tree line, illuminating everything in the Grove with a faint green glow. He must have slept for nearly six hours. Which was not nearly enough, but was still far more than he’d expected to get, which was none. Whether it was mercy or expediency on the elves’ part, he didn’t know.

Runaan, for his part, let his shoulders ease from around his ears, and returned to his bath.

Liyam appeared to tune out the exchange completely, still crouching by Viren’s side with his open bottle. “So… juice?”

\--*--

The buzzing beneath his skin never completely abated, but after having slept and drained the entire bottle of sunberry juice (it, unlike the moonberry juice, tasted faintly peppery and left behind a faint suggestion of heat, but was if anything even more invigorating), Viren no longer found it nearly so distracting.

His bath, unfortunately, proved harder to navigate than his dinner, for all that he wanted it nearly as badly. “I am not walking the rest of the way to your capital without a shirt,” said Viren to Yaeger, who had gotten out a knife and was holding it precipitously close to Viren’s right sleeve. “Just untie me.”

“No,” said Runaan, when Yaeger shot him a questioning look. “We can sew it back on him afterwards. We’re not giving the human a chance to escape.”

“’The human,’” said Viren sarcastically, “Has no reason to escape when he knows that if he breaks _his_ word, you have no reason to keep _yours_.”

“You could kill us all,” said Runaan.

Viren was not going to argue for his lack of martial prowess, considering he had gotten here in the first place by convincing them he had singlehandedly defeated their king. “And that would stop the _next_ team of Moonshadow Assassins _how_ , exactly? I didn’t hand myself over to you just to buy my king another measly month.”

“He has a point,” said Yaeger to Runaan.

“Humans are cowards,” said Runaan, apparently back to pretending that Viren wasn’t there. Though not very well; his gaze didn’t leave Viren’s once as he said, “He might lose his nerve and run.”

Viren sneered. “So sorry if I disappoint you.”

It didn’t even occur to him that Runaan might have been baiting him—that the elf thought Viren needed to be _provoked_ into fulfilling his vows—until a faint smirk crossed the elf’s lips and he waved a hand dismissively at Yaeger, who sheathed his knife and went to work unknotting the ropes hobbling Viren’s hands.

The urge to walk over and punch Runaan in the face once Yaeger was done was almost unbearable. However, even disregarding the magic of the Grove, he was, historically, terrible at physical violence, so Viren grit his teeth and settled for shaking out his hands—the elves had learned their lesson from the first rope-tying mishap, but that didn’t mean the bindings were comfortable—before pulling his shirt off over his head. He removed his boots and socks next—with some difficulty, as the brace on his left knee had somehow survived all recent misadventures—before leaning over to slide into the spring.

“Five toes too?” said Yaeger. “Weird.” Viren turned and stared at him. “What? I’ve never seen human feet before.”

Viren found his eyes drifting unwillingly to Runaan, who was toweling off his own feet by the side of the spring. They were as purple and narrow as the rest of him, and yes, four toes.

Elves were so oddly built. Runaan, for example, was taller than him, and wider in the shoulders, but despite the fact that Viren was quite lean by human standards, Runaan was even leaner, and he was the thickest built of the five. Despite that, all of the elves were more athletic than they had any right to be. Some of it was magic, especially at night, but most it, Viren was pretty sure, was the arrangement of their musculature, something about it giving them greater grip and lifting strength than a human twice their size.

Magic or not, elves were stronger than humans. More graceful than humans. More beautiful. Longer lived as well, if the stories were anything to go by.

Even as Viren reached for the pureberries—which, Liyam had assured him, did not burn at all as long as their juice was kept away from open wounds—he had to work to keep his nails from biting into his still-healing palms. ‘Humans were given everything’? The elves lived in a land where berries could prevent infection, where painkillers literally _grew on trees_. Anything humans might have been given had been ripped from them a long time ago. Anything humans now possessed, they had taken for themselves.

Viren dunked his head under the water and scrubbed at his hair, trying not to scream at the unfairness of it. For all that hardly any of them had been blessed with the power to channel magic, humans were as native to Xadia as any elf or dragon; the fact that Xadia’s bounty worked as well on humans as elves was proof enough of that. Yet when any one of them attempted to cross the Border, to take back any portion of their homeland, they were invaders, thieves. Humans killing an enemy commander on the battlefield was murder, yet elves slitting a king’s throat in his bed at night was justice, retribution in kind.

The worst of it was that _humans believed it_. They had been gone from Xadia so long that it _was_ alien to them, every step on Xadian soil a trespass. As if the actions of a few a millennium ago had tainted them, rightfully condemned them all to what Viren’s oldest books only referred to as ‘the Wastes.’ As if that was all they deserved.

As if they did not deserve Xadia.

Even Harrow had seemed to believe that, at the end, once rumors of the Dragon Prince’s demise had reached his ears. Once he had- once he’d seen Viren-

Well. Perhaps Viren deserved to die in his place for that, if nothing else.


	5. Chapter 5

It was dark by the time they set out from the Grove. Pruktha had with absurd quickness carved him a cane out of a branch while he’d been bathing (which, irritatingly, possessed both a better height and grip than his staff), but even with the added support, the elves were so invigorated by the waning gibbous moon that Runaan grew impatient with his speed of travel before they were even a mile outside the Grove.

“You can walk again at daybreak,” said Runaan, not sounding at all out of breath despite the fact that he was sprinting through a jungle shouldering over one hundred sixty pounds of weight. A weight he had visibly struggled with at the Border, for all that he had been able to bear it all the same, the elves’ merely impressive vitality during the day transformed into impossible strength at moonrise.

Viren, who was the weight being shouldered in question, had to set his jaw just so he wouldn’t bite his tongue from all the jostling.

His expression must have appeared even more miserable than he felt (which was very), as Yaeger—invisible except for the occasional flash of brown eyes—laughed and slapped him congenially on the shoulder as he dashed past, apparently no longer at all impeded by his injuries. “Don’t look like that, Earth mage! It’s still one hundred thirty miles to the capital. There will still be a couple of miles left for you by dawn!”

“Could you please knock me out again,” hissed Viren, who did not see himself surviving another ten hours of having to feel his brain rattling inside his skull.

“Excellent idea,” said Runaan, slowing to a halt on top of a small bluff that made it obvious just how far the Prism Jungle extended (which was, as best as Viren could tell, forever). “Save us from human complaining for the night.”

“But then there’s nothing to contrast with my elven complaining,” said Yaeger, though he obligingly pressed his fingers to Viren’s carotid artery.

It felt… familiar. Well, of course, now that he thought about it, Yaeger had been the one who-

\--*--

He woke up when Pruktha dropped him.

Not very far. From the noticeable-but-not-actually-painful jolt that ran through him when he hit the ground, it seemed as if Pruktha had actually lowered him most of the way before apparently deciding that the tree mulch would provide a soft enough landing pad and just let him fall the last foot.

It more or less was, which didn’t stop him from letting out a groan the second he tried to move, something cracking in both elbows when he levered himself to his knees, his body feeling like nothing more than one massive bruise. Which made sense, considering he had been tossed about on bony elven shoulders all night even if he hadn’t been conscious for it.

Had he felt like this yesterday morning?

Probably. It had just been hard to notice past the concussion and lack of blood flow to his hands.

“Rise and shine, Earth mage!” came the far too cheerful voice of Yaeger, who yanked him in one smooth motion up to his feet. His legs held, which was good, and Liyam was holding out to him the cane and a bottle of clear goo which Viren could only imagine was soothleaf gel, which was even better.

“How far?” he managed after taking a swig from the bottle, feeling some of the ache in his limbs fade away.

“Only nineteen miles left to the capital,” said Liyam in what Viren imagined the elf thought was an encouraging tone.

It was not. A whole day of hiking, at the end of which he would be lucky if his knee were only knocked out of commission for a week.

Only a day’s travel until he met his fate. And if he were still alive in a week’s time, he heavily suspected he would wish he were not.

Viren hid his expression by bending over to adjust his grip on the cane, exhaling in one long, studiously even breath before straightening and finally taking a look around at what constituted the terrain over one hundred miles into the heart of Xadia.

Said terrain, however, proved completely imperceptible, as spanning from just a few feet in front of him all the way to the horizon was an enormous flock of six-eyed cranes, each as tall as a man, their tails so refractive they appeared to catch alight in green and gold as the sun rose up behind them.

Viren felt his breath catch in his chest. He had thought himself long inured to the wonder of magic—difficult not to grow jaded about something you had studied in excruciating, endless detail since childhood, that sometimes felt like it required too much of a cost to be paid—but this... this looked like magic had felt, once. Back when the world had held nothing but possibility. “What…”

“Phoenix,” said Dashou, crouching to the left of him by a small stream to rinse off her hands; it took some squinting on Viren’s part to realize the flock was resting on what appeared to be a massive, shallow lake into which the stream fed, the water’s reflection of the flock making the water itself near-invisible. “Sun birds. They are immortal, in a way. Those that die are revived every morning.” She pointed. “Look.”

Viren looked. One of the nearest phoenix wasn’t moving, its body an absolute stillness that was instantly recognizable as a corpse, but as soon as the light of the sun fell upon it, it abruptly and without warning erupted into flame.

It happened so quickly that Viren didn’t even have time to flinch before the fire went out, leaving nothing behind but a sooty little chick that shook itself off in the water and gave a plaintive _cheep_.

“They cannot breed, of course,” said Dashou, drying off her hands on a cloth she pulled from her belt. “If they could they would overrun Xadia entirely.”

“Taste good, though,” said Yaeger, and promptly shot one.

The entire flock turned and seemed to give Yaeger a disgusted look in unison before flying off, the phoenix chick wobbling a little as it followed in the rear, leaving nothing behind but the carcass of the one Yaeger had killed.

“Aw,” said Liyam, his shoulders drooping to Viren’s right. “I really wanted to see their Greet the Sun dance, too.”

Pruktha was frowning as well, which was only subtly different from his usual expression of general disapproval; a slightly greater narrowing of the eyes, Viren decided. “That was unnecessary.”

“Get over it,” said Yaeger, splashing into the shallows to grab the dead phoenix by the neck before wading back to shore and beginning to rough-pluck it of its feathers, dropping them all into a neat little pile at his feet. “I’m sick of berry juice, and it’ll be alive again tomorrow.”

Viren looked at the dead phoenix. This close, he could feel the Sun magic radiating off it, and unlike other dead magical creatures he had seen, the magic was not fading at all, a steady glow of warmth that was no darker or colder than had come from the creature in life.

What was equally unusual was that the glow had transferred, coalescing entirely in the feathers when once it had diffused itself throughout the creature’s entire body. Parts of magical creatures were also magical, of course, but usually only marginally so, coals to indicate where a fire once raged, barely hot enough to burn on their own.

He leaned over and picked up a semiplume from where Yaeger had let it fall. It was warm, almost uncomfortably so, and the feather looked like a flickering golden candle flame flecked with green between his fingertips. “They are reborn from their feathers.”

“… Yes,” said Dashou. She was looking at him oddly.

Somehow this was not enough of a clue to act as a filter between his mouth and his brain, as Viren still found himself saying, “The magic is still alive within these. It’s why they can come back to life even once their bodies are dead.”

All of the elves stopped and looked at him.

“… Wow,” said Yaeger, the mostly-plucked phoenix dangling from one hand. “Maybe… don’t say things like that when Runaan is around.”

“Yes,” said a voice from behind him—too close—and a hand gripped his wrist tightly and _twisted_ , causing the semiplume to slip out from between Viren’s fingers and drop to the ground. “That would be _wise_.

“Did none of you really think better of letting a Dark Mage handle the remains of a phoenix?” This last was directed at the other elves, to which Dashou, Liyam, and Yaeger just shrugged, Liyam somewhat shamefacedly, and Pruktha didn’t react at all.

“That,” said Viren, once Runaan had released him and the flare of pain in his wrist had receded, “Was unnecessary.”

“Really?” said Runaan, his voice holding a note of mocking incredulity that seemed incredibly foreign coming from the humorless assassin. “Tell me you weren’t thinking of how you would be able to permanently kill it.”

Viren said nothing.

“That’s what I thought,” said Runaan and shoved him back a step. “Stay away from the phoenix or I’ll break your hand.”

“ _Fine_ ,” said Viren, unable to keep an edge out of his own voice.

“Uh,” broke in Yaeger, “Will he still be able to eat this?” He held up the phoenix carcass. “’Cause we don’t really have anything else.”

“Yes,” said Dashou, her eyes flickering between Viren and Runaan, her posture too relaxed to not be deliberate. “The magic is in the feathers only.”

It was, to say the least, an awkward breakfast.

\--*--

It did in fact prove to be a hike.

“There is a wonderful human invention I’d like to pass on to you,” said Viren, staring up a hill with nary even a goat trail to be seen. It was a lovely hill, with thick green grass and splashes of wildflowers in every shade. He had seen twenty-three more like it earlier that morning. Some of them had more resembled cliffs. “They’re called ‘roads.’”

“Elves invented roads,” said Pruktha.

“I’ve yet to see any evidence of that,” said Viren.

Runaan snorted dismissively. “Did you really imagine we’d drag a human prisoner along a major thoroughfare? We move only where we will be unseen.”

“Wonderful,” said Viren flatly, and took another swig of the soothleaf gel.

He’d sweat through his shirt by the time they stopped for lunch (more phoenix, now cold) and the bone-deep twinge in his left knee had returned, but he ignored it as best he could, finishing off the bottle of water Liyam handed him and doing his best to eavesdrop on Runaan and Dashou’s conversation behind him.

“We’ll make it to the capital by late afternoon, even using the catacombs,” said Dashou, to which Runaan only gave an affirmative grunt. There was a pause, then Dashou gave a sigh. “It will all be well, Runaan. She-”

“Don’t,” said Runaan.

Another pause. “Very well.”

Viren couldn’t repress his wince when they stood to continue, to which Yaeger gave a laugh at his expression and grabbed Viren’s left wrist to pull his arm around Yaeger’s shoulders, snatching Viren’s cane out of his right hand as he did and tossing it to Pruktha, who caught it neatly and slid it crosswise into some of the straps of his pack. “Come on Earth mage, only six more miles to go, that’s nothing. The last three are even flat!”

The reason they were flat, as it turned out, was because the last leg of the trip went straight through the mountain range instead of over it. A cave system, but not entirely a natural one, the floors sanded smooth.

The ceilings, regrettably, were not similarly renovated, and Viren hit his head twice on unfortunately placed stalactites before he hissed, “Is there a _reason_ we’re walking in the dark?”

There was a pause.

“Huh?” came Liyam’s voice from somewhere ahead of him.

“We did not plan for this trip with the idea of taking a human prisoner,” said Runaan from somewhere behind. “And we have no need for light to see.”

“… Oooohh,” came Liyam’s voice again, a few seconds later.

Yaeger snickered, of course from immediately to Viren’s left considering he still had Viren’s arm slung across his shoulders to help carry him along. “Was wondering why you weren’t ducking.”

“I’m going to take that as a no,” said Viren curtly, his temper short through the dull headache that had resulted from being dealt yet more blows to the head, and snapped his right fingers. He had to snap twice before the Torch spell caught—it was always a bit intemperate out of direct sunlight even during the day—but after a second his palm obligingly started to emit a bright beam of light.

At which point Yaeger screamed and shoved him to the ground, Viren barely catching himself with his right hand before his shoulder hit the stone floor, the Torch spell flickering out upon impact. “Holy shit! Holy shit! What the fuck is-”

“Yaeger,” said Runaan, again far too close to Viren for his liking. “What is it?”

“Did you not see that?” said Yaeger, his voice unexpectedly shrill. “He must have- grabbed some phoenix feathers or something-”

“I did _not_ ,” said Viren, now feeling a little bit panicked himself, both at Yaeger’s unexpected reaction and the proximity of Runaan, the elven leader’s threat of breaking his hand still fresh in the bruises encircling his wrist.

“Yaeger,” said Runaan again, his voice sharp. Yaeger stopped talking, though his breathing could still clearly be heard in the stale air of the caves, too fast and uneven. “You shame yourself. It was just a Torch spell. He wouldn’t need phoenix feathers for that, it’s day.”

“I’m not-” began Yaeger, strangely defensive. “I was just- startled, okay? He’s an _Earth_ mage.”

“He’s _human_ ,” said Runaan. “Humans aren’t connected to the Primal Sources. Their mages are conduits only, which means they aren’t restricted to one Source like ours.”

“… The fuck?” said Yaeger, sounding bewildered. “Condu- But- More than one? How does that even _work_?”

“If you’re curious, ask Javed to explain it to you,” said Runaan shortly, grabbing Viren by the underside of his left arm and hauling him to his feet before shoving him forward. “I’m no scholar.”

“Huh,” said Liyam bemusedly, catching Viren before he had time to stumble more than a few steps. “So you’re able to channel more than one Primal Source? That’s kind of cool.”

“ _Freaky_ , you mean,” said Yaeger, the edge of malice in his voice turning the quip unexpectedly vicious. “ _Unnatural_ , maybe.”

It was entirely out of spite—and vengeance for his much-abused right wrist—that this time when Viren cast his Torch spell, he made sure his palm was aimed straight at Yaeger’s face. The elf’s pupils contracted all at once and he yelped, throwing up his left arm to cover his eyes. “Yes,” said Viren blandly, watching the elf flounder backwards with no little satisfaction. “Unnatural.”

Liyam spluttered a laugh, though it died out almost immediately when Yaeger glared at him. “Uh… sorry.”

“Childish,” said Pruktha disapprovingly from the back.

Considering he had, in fact, learned that particular application of the Torch spell from one of his children (using it on the other one of his children), Viren was not about to dispute this.

“If you are quite done,” came Runaan’s voice echoing from far ahead.

Viren smirked, letting Yaeger see it, before allowing Liyam to throw his left arm over the elf’s shoulders and continuing on down the passageway.

Well, one of many passageways, every few minutes bringing them to yet another in a series of seemingly identical forks. Viren had no idea what signs Runaan was looking for to decide which path to take, to Viren’s eye all branches in the cave system lacking any identifying marks at all to guide the way, but Runaan’s footsteps were confident and unerring, the elf leader not stopping for an instant as they progressed further and further into the caverns.

It was, as best as Viren could tell in the dark, a little over an hour later when Runaan snapped at him to dampen the Torch. “We’re nearly at the exit.”

“Exit into where?” asked Viren, though he let the Torch go out.

“The Castle,” said Liyam.

It was only with effort that Viren kept his breathing even. He had… expected more warning than that.

Which, as it turned out, was hardly any at all, as it was less than a minute later that Viren heard the sound of Runaan ascending stone steps, then the soft creak of rusted hinges. Faint torchlight flickered down the hatch as Runaan threw open the trapdoor, then turned around to look back down the stairs, his eyes reflecting the light like a cat’s. “Clear. Dashou, tie the human back up. All of you, wait down here. I am going to go request an emergency audience with the queen.” The hinges squeaked again as Runaan closed the trapdoor behind him, leaving them again in darkness.

“The queen?” said Viren.

“Our sovereign, the Dragon Queen,” said Liyam. “You know.”

Viren did not.

“The Dragon King’s mate,” Pruktha rumbled. “The Prince’s mother.”

… Oh.

Well.

He should have expected that, he supposed. The assassination attempt on Harrow had, in retrospect, seemed very, very personal.

He hoped she was angry. Angry enough to be stupid. Angry enough that it would be quick.

Viren felt a hand on his right wrist. The grip was not harsh, but he still had to hold back a grimace as the fingers pressed into the bruises. “Liyam,” came Dashou’s voice. “Hold him up.” Liyam obligingly unwound Viren’s left arm from around his shoulders and moved to support him by his underarms as Dashou began briskly wrapping the rope around Viren’s right wrist, then started to move on to his left.

Viren had to swallow twice before he managed, “Wait.”

Dashou stopped, her fingers resting lightly on his pulse. “What is it?”

Viren grabbed the bottle of soothleaf gel from where he had knotted it to his belt, pulled out the cork one-handed, and downed the last of the dregs. (He’d be damned if he limped in front of Thunder’s queen.)

Then he took a deep breath, his breath traitorously stuttering once upon the exhale, and held out both of his wrists in front of him.

After a moment, Dashou continued her binding of Viren’s hands, the knots as methodical and sure as they had ever been. However, once she was done, her hands stayed wrapped around his instead of immediately falling away, and she leaned forward to whisper in his ear, “You have done well so far. Do not let yourself falter now, at the last.”

There was not a lot to say to that. Not that he got the chance, as a few seconds later the trapdoor was thrown open and Viren found himself squinting up into the faces of half a dozen heavily armored Sunfire elves, who seemed almost as surprised to see him as he was to see them.

“… Huh,” said the one furthest in the back. “It is a human.”

“No shit, Nashor,” said the one in front, who reached down and grabbed Viren by his right forearm before unceremoniously hauling Viren out of Liyam’s grasp and up the stairs, displaying that same easy strength as the Moonshadow Elves did at night. She then shoved Viren into the arms of the two Sunfire elves next to her, who each immediately grabbed Viren by one shoulder, the tightening of their hands around him feeling almost impossible implacable. Like an animal, caught in a trap of his own making. Viren found himself struggling to breathe again, then, of all things, had to struggle not to laugh. Ridiculous. As if fighting now would yield him anything more than bruises and shame at his own weakness.

“ _Turma_ of Runaan,” said the front elf, this time much more formally. “We are here on behalf of your captain and the Dragon Queen to escort you and your prisoner to her majesty. Please, follow me.”

She then turned and walked away, not bothering to turn and see if the Moonshadow Elves followed. The other Sunfire elves certainly did, Viren’s own personal guards more pulling him along than bothering at playing escort.

It was up several flights of back stairs—more finely hewn than the same back at Katolis Castle, but still recognizable by their narrow design—before Viren found himself dragged into natural lighting, the sun coming through the windows bright enough to make him tear up after over an hour underground. He was tossed as unceremoniously to the ground as he’d originally been grabbed, his knees hitting the stone floor with enough of an impact to rattle his teeth. He was distantly thankful for the soothleaf gel; his right knee hurt, faintly, but his left knee didn’t feel like anything at all.

He attempted to straighten. His hands didn’t even make it off the floor before the heel of a boot shoved hard into his shoulder and knocked him back prostrate on the ground, the flaming orange edge of a Sunforged blade glowing in his periphery just inches from his right eye. “Stay down, human.”

“That’s enough for now, Atma.”

It was not a voice. It said words, but you didn’t feel voices burn along your skin, vibrate in your chest, etch themselves into your bones. It felt like an earthquake. A tsunami. A tornado, the pauses for breath not a respite but the eye of the storm. No safety, only a moment of quiet to realize both the enormity of the danger you were facing and exactly what little you could do to protect yourself, which was nothing.

It was with a near soul-crushing amount of dread that Viren forced himself to look upward, and found himself staring into a lipid pool of blue larger than his entire body. Then the pool… blinked.

“So,” said the Sun Archdragon. “Runaan has been telling me you are the human who murdered my mate and kidnapped my son.”


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi. Please notice the warnings change.

The sheer _weight_ of the dragon’s voice was such that it took Viren a few seconds to actually hear the words.

And promptly start to wonder if he was hallucinating out of sheer panic. Because there was no way for Runaan to know that the Dragon Prince was alive.

Everyone knew the egg had been destroyed. _Harrow_ knew Viren had destroyed the egg. The only person who knew better besides Viren himself was Claudia.

Viren had a moment of pure madness where he wondered if his daughter had betrayed them all to the elves before reality reasserted itself and he realized that literally any other explanation was more likely, for all that he couldn’t think of one. A failure of their anti-scrying wards and the involvement of a Starsoul Seer, perhaps-

The dragon was not done. “We were just getting to the part of the story where Runaan was going to tell me why he believed this.”

“My queen,” came Runaan’s voice stiffly from somewhere off to the right. “I told you I saw your son’s egg.”

“You misunderstand me,” said the Sun Archdragon. “I do not question your word. My son lives. Stormriders have already been sent out to the Border. He and your niece will be found.”

Niece?

The unspoken of sixth. Rayla.

Somehow the missing elf had snuck into Katolis Castle and found the egg. It should have been impossible, but… Moonshadow Elves. Who knew how long they had been scouting the area before Marcos stumbled across them? They might know the secret passages better now than he did. And if they had the egg… if they retrieved it back to its mother alive…

Then… then it had all been for nothing in the end, hadn’t it. Everything they had done. Everything _he_ had done. The death of Thunder should have marked a turning point, but instead had earned them at best a decade of a less well defended Border before things returned to exactly as they were, and for that they had lost over one thousand soldiers, a third of the senior officers at the Breach, and nearly Harrow as well.

And of course, lest he forget, him on his knees in front of Thunder’s queen. One more natural consequence of what was proving in retrospect to be an enormous, chaotic mess.

Said queen, for her part, cocked her head to one side. “I am, however, questioning your judgment, Runaan. What proof did this human give you that he was the one who slew my mate?”

A moment of silence. “He pronounced himself as such.”

“… My darling Runaan,” breathed the Dragon Queen, the words more felt than heard, “Humans _lie_.”

“It was in front of the king’s guards,” said Runaan, “And for all the evil of it, the murder of your mate was the greatest feat the humans have accomplished since their exile. If it had truly been King Harrow who killed him, the guards never would have stood for the slander of letting someone else take the credit.”

“You overestimate human pride,” said the Dragon Queen. “They might have seen the wisdom of sacrificing a lesser piece to save their greatest.”

Viren was beginning to wonder why he needed to be present for this conversation when the Dragon Queen actually _looked_ at him. “Though I suppose if you were wrong, it is only a month lost, and I cannot call the mission a failure if it brings me back my son. And since you have brought me the self-proclaimed slayer alive…”

She didn’t even play at sketching a rune, just breathed a single word, and Viren hissed as something _burned_ itself into his throat. The feeling of carelessly touching a heated cauldron not yet cooled, but for his inability to jerk away.

The Dragon Queen settled. “That should do well enough. What is your name, human?”

When Viren didn’t respond immediately, the burning in his throat started to crawl up his neck.

“Viren,” said Viren, and the burning immediately receded. What in-

“And who are you?”

Viren considered saying something sarcastic, but before the thought even fully coalesced, he felt himself start to choke as the burning in his throat _flared_ , removing all possibility of actually considering his answer as the pain skittered across his mind. “… The High Mage… of Katolis.”

And the burning receded again.

Viren pressed his forehead into the cool stone of the throne room and forced his breathing to even out. Well. That was one long-speculated suspicion about Sun magic confirmed. With its natural opposition to Moon magic, human mages had hypothesized forever that the magic of the Sun could be turned to the revealing of truth. As there wasn’t a single Sun Primal Stone to be found within any of the five kingdoms and such a spell would require too much power to draw enough to cast it just from sunlight, there had been no way to _prove_ that hypothesis… except now he had, he supposed.

Hurray for him.                                                                                                                    

“High Mage of Katolis?” the Dragon Queen said. “And what does that mean, exactly?”

“It means,” said Viren, not bothering to lift his face off the floor or hide in his voice that he found the question asinine, “That I am recognized as the premier mage in Katolis.”

“‘The premier mage in Katolis’?” said the Dragon Queen, either ignoring or not caring about his disrespectful tone even as the so-called Atma’s Sunforged blade continued to hover in his periphery. “Besides your king, you mean?”

… What? “… What?” Which apparently wasn’t enough of an answer for the rune burning itself into his throat, as the heat began creeping upward again. “The king isn’t-” Oh.

Oh no.

The Dragon Queen hadn’t just been asking him stupid questions to establish the efficacy of the spell, she had been asking him stupid questions because she _didn’t know the answers_.

They hadn’t known who he was. They thought Harrow was a mage. Which- he knew literally nothing about her court either, but she had throngs of Moonshadow Elves and he imagined at least a few Starsoul Seers to work with, he would have thought she would use them.

Except that until four months ago, it was likely that Xadia had not considered any of the human kingdoms to pose a- to pose a serious threat-

It… really was difficult to think around the feeling of a brand being pushed deeper and deeper into his flesh.

“… Your king isn’t a mage.” The Dragon Queen didn’t sound surprised, or much of anything, really, but there was an audible rustling of the court around them. “You just have to say it, you know. Then the pain will stop.”

She knew, now. She _knew_. There was no point in not saying it. Except even as he ground his forehead even harder into the stone floor, willing some of the cold to permeate throughout his body, Viren still knew it to be a betrayal when he whispered, “He isn’t.”

“… Did you kill my mate, Viren?” His name sounded foreign, coming from her. The first syllable reverberated through both the air and the ground, the vibration running through him as he wished the cold might.

“Yes.” This time, there was no flare of pain at all.

The Dragon Queen settled again. “Well,” she said, though not to him. “It looks like you caught yourself a dragon slayer after all, Runaan.

“Well done.” And she made a flicking motion with one claw, from which several sparks of light glided out and immediately flew out of Viren’s field of vision.

There was the sound of several sighs of relief behind him, and to the right he could hear a steady exhalation, then Runaan’s voice, noticeably less tight: “Thank you, my queen.”

The Dragon Queen hummed deep in her throat. The throne room tremored. “It is no more than you deserve, for your service. You have, after all, brought me an invaluable opportunity.” She leaned towards Viren, and the air around them shimmered. Viren had started sweating the moment he entered the throne room, but now it was actually getting hard to breathe, every inhalation a scald, not poisonous but no less dry or hot than at the Border. “Tell me who helped you kill my mate, Viren. I would have a list for my Moonshadow Assassins to hunt down so they might put their heads on pikes.”

“No one.” Even without the relief from pain, it was so _satisfying_ to say, to see the Dragon Queen recoil back, if just slightly. “I was alone. No one even knew what I was planning, either for your mate or your egg.” There had been no point. Soldiers just would have slowed him down. No other mage but Claudia had the knowledge base to even begin to understand what he was attempting to do, and she was too important to Katolis’ future to risk.

And Harrow… Harrow would have tried to stop him.

The Dragon Queen’s head cocked to the side again. “What does the word ‘king,’ mean for your people, Viren?” The question was rhetorical; the rune at Viren’s throat stayed dormant. “Because among us, it means ‘power.’ Whereas I have heard nothing from you that doesn’t make me think that your King Harrow embodies _weakness_. No magic. No intelligence. No _respect_. One of his subjects undertakes the most important military action of the millennium and _deliberately_ conceals his plans from his king, and yet it doesn’t even seem as if you were punished for your deceit. Did you even _tell_ him you had my son hidden in his castle?”

“… No,” Viren ground out.

“Why?”

There were so many reasons.

… No. That was a lie. There was only one.

He had meant to, once. He had tried, upon his return, the egg concealed somewhere safe but nearby. Even in the wake of having singlehandedly slain the entirety of the Dragon Prince’s personal guard, so much of Thunder’s power still coursed through him that he had been drunk with it, had _flown_ to Harrow’s tent at the back of the war camp, had been waiting for his king in the dark when Harrow had walked in an hour later.

It hadn’t even occurred to him that Harrow would be angry at him for killing Thunder, and he hadn’t been. No, in fact Harrow had been _elated_ , had laughed upon spotting him, only faintly illuminated by the moonlight streaming through the tent flap but easily recognized by Harrow by his silhouette. “You stupid bastard,” said Harrow, fondness dripping from each word as he turned to light a candle. “I can’t believe-”

And then he had turned back with the candle lit, and he had seen Viren. Actually seen him. And the smile had dropped from his face like a stone. “... What have you done to yourself?”

Viren hadn’t realized that he himself had been grinning until he stopped. Oh.

Oh no.

He knew about the stain overuse of Dark Magic could leave behind, but… it was always a temporary thing. A few seconds, a minute or two at worst, before the purple leeched from his skin and the black from his eyes.

At least, that’s how it had always been before.

It had been nearly five hours since he had killed Thunder.

“Harrow-”

Even lit by the candle, Harrow’s expression was near unreadable, but when Viren reached for him… he flinched.

“Harrow-” Viren tried again. He knew he sounded desperate, but… Harrow had never flinched from him. Not once. Not ever. Not when Viren had accidentally lit his cape on his fire with a miscast _Fulminus_ when they were eleven, not when he had made it rain for three days in the drought-ravaged Liro Valley when they were fourteen, not when for lack of better options he had drowned the seven assassins sent by enemies of Harrow’s father in the middle of the castle throne room on the eve of Harrow’s sixteenth birthday.

Mages were not human. Everyone knew that. They _looked_ human, were born from them, could breed with them well enough, but humans could not touch the Primal Sources. That was the purview of magical creatures, of elves, of dragons. Mages were just as alien, but even more terrifying for how they could be mistaken for _normal_ , at a glance. Respected, for their power, but… apart.

Viren had been four years old when he had been identified as a mage. He had been nine when he was sent to Katolis Castle, his first teacher—come into his magic late and solely a practitioner of Earth magic—having determined he had nothing left to teach.

Viren arrived at Katolis Castle completely alone, the only affection he had known in the past five years from his teacher, his own family long since utterly withdrawn both their love and their presence from his life. And Harrow—only child, heir to the throne, already a survivor of multiple attempts on his life at the grand age of some two months older than Viren and, in his own way, even more apart—had taken one look at the new apprentice to the High Mage of Katolis and decided that they were going to be friends.

While everyone else carefully kept their eyes pointed downwards, had always stood a prudent two steps away, had their every action edged with wariness whether his latest act of magic was to their benefit or not—had never, ever touched him—Harrow- Harrow had-

Harrow had been _different_. To see that same look in his eye-

Harrow didn’t seem to notice his desperation, his mouth in a thin line. “Is this what Dark Magic does to you?”

“It’s temporary,” said Viren quickly.

“But it isn’t new,” said Harrow quietly.

Viren had nothing to say to that.

And Harrow… looked away. “I can’t see you like this.”

Something inside Viren twisted. “Like _what_?” He took a step towards Harrow. “Like I have done something that _no one else_ has ever accomplished? Like I-”

“Like you’re _poisoning_ yourself, you idiot,” hissed Harrow. He looked again towards Viren, but his eyes stopped somewhere around Viren’s nose, unwilling or unable even now to meet his gaze. “Like _every time_ you told me of some _simpler, creative solution_ that just involved a _little bit_ of Dark Magic, what was _really_ happening was that you were making yourself _rot_ from the _inside_. You’re _bleeding black_ from your _eyes_.”

“It’s _fine_ ,” said Viren. “I-”

“If it’s _fine_ ,” Harrow said, aping his tone mockingly as he gestured at Viren’s face, “Why have you hidden _this_ from me?”

“Because-” started Viren, then stopped.

“You know why,” said Harrow. He took a step backwards and—too deliberately, too controlled (of course, that made sense, he must have been exhausted; even if Viren couldn’t feel it, thrumming with Thunder’s magic as he was, midnight had come and gone a long time ago)—collapsed into his chair before closing his eyes. “Go away, Viren. Don’t come back until I can look at you again.”

It was a very unambiguous order. Viren had walked to the tent flap. Had waited, for just a few seconds, to see if Harrow would rescind his (emotional, rash, surely _regretted_ ) command.

He did not. So Viren left.

Three weeks passed before he could look himself in the mirror and see grey instead of black (though a few of the streaks in his hair never faded entirely, even months after the fact). And by the time he returned to Katolis Castle, word of the Dragon Prince’s demise had already reached Harrow’s ears, and the king—his oldest, greatest, _only_ friend—had been more than willing to believe Viren capable of murdering a helpless child.

So the fact that the Dragon Prince was very much alive… well. Harrow had already decided what kind of person Viren was. Who was Viren to contradict his king.

So there was really only one answer to the Dragon Queen’s question, in the end. “Spite.”

There was a moment of silence.

“So,” said the Dragon Queen. “You hide information of great import to your country and king out of malice. You don’t respect your king or his will. As the most powerful mage in your home country, he is, certainly, _weaker_ than you in every way that matters. You have shown yourself extremely capable of ruthlessness-” And in that moment, Viren realized that the Dragon Queen knew _exactly_ how he had managed to kill Thunder, for all that she apparently hadn’t seen fit to share that fact with Runaan or his team, “And yet… here you kneel before me in Harrow’s place, when all you had to do to take the throne from him—however he managed to hold it before, for all his frailties—was step to the side.

“So why didn’t you?”

The Sunforged blade near his eye inched closer, and a boot heel again dug into his shoulder. “He could be here to try and kill you as he did the king, my queen,” said Atma.

“No,” said the Dragon Queen, as the burning again began to intensify in Viren’s throat. “He lacks the resources for that.” So she _definitely_ knew how he had killed Thunder, then.

Well. No great loss. He had no hope of ever accomplishing a feat of magic so great again, considering the unique circumstances that had allowed him to kill Thunder to begin with, and it wasn’t as if how he had done it wasn’t obvious to those who knew what to look for. Claudia had always surpassed him in so many ways; should she find herself in need of a way to slay a dragon, he had no doubt she would find it with or without his precedent.

“So?” said the Dragon Queen, again to him.

There were so many _good_ answers to her question, ones he would have given if asked by the likes of one of the Katolian generals, or High Priest Opeli. Harrow was the greatest king Katolis—all of the five kingdoms—had seen in centuries, if not since the kingdoms’ founding. Wise, brave, considered, iron willed, magnetic. Men and women flocked to him like birds, blossomed like flowers facing towards the sun when given even a small measure of his regard. Even amongst the kings and queens of the other five kingdoms, he was unquestionably first among equals, and not only because Katolis was the largest and strongest among them. To lose Harrow would be a blow from which Katolis—from which _humanity_ —might never recover. And it would not be to an adult to whom the throne would fall (and certainly not to any mage, disqualified by their standing from ever wearing a crown no matter the Dragon Queen’s flawed understanding of human power structures), but to a wide-eyed, idealistic child would had claimed not a year ago that he could talk to raccoons.

All of this was true. It was also true that none of that was the actual _reason_ for what Viren had done, which while embarrassing was probably for the best; if the Dragon Queen thought Harrow a powerless weakling instead of the linchpin that held humanity united, perhaps there was a chance she might actually keep Runaan’s word and let Viren die in Harrow’s place. “Because I love him.”

“So it was sentiment, then,” said the Dragon Queen. She almost sounded disappointed. “Well. It has brought low greater beings than you before.

“I had planned on killing you, originally, when Runaan told me who he had down in the crypts,” she continued; for all the words seemed directed at him, she was now clearly addressing her court. “However, since my son is alive, to kill you now would be to deny him his own justice.” It was amazing how, coming from her, the word _justice_ sounded almost exactly like _revenge_. “But you still took my heart from me. To leave you whole would be… uneven, I think.”

Viren had come to Xadia to die. That was the greatest sacrifice, wasn’t it?

Why was the prospect that the Dragon Queen planned something _else_ for him somehow worse?

“Runaan? Which arm was it you bound to the human king’s death?”

Runaan actually took a few seconds to respond. Even as he did, he sounded strangely subdued as he replied, “… The right, my queen.”

“Mm,” hummed the Dragon Queen. “Atma?”

The boot on Viren’s shoulder shifted. “Yes, my queen?”

“Cut his bonds. And hold him down.”

It was still light outside. Viren had little chance in a contest of strength against an elf at the best of times, but against a Sunfire Elf during the day he had less than none. It was panic—blind, animal terror—that saw him scrabbling to shove her off as Atma efficiently cut through the ropes around his hands with her blade before shoving him prone and kneeling on his right shoulder. “Nashor!” Atma barked, when Viren blindly reached backwards behind him to claw at her with his left hand. Nashor obligingly walked up behind them and wrenched Viren’s left wrist back to the floor and held it there, inexorable. It felt like pushing back against a mountain. It felt like failure, tasted like the blood in his mouth from his teeth biting into his cheek where his face was ground into the stone, Atma’s grip in his hair implacable. He nearly laughed. Pathetic. All of Dashou’s advice, and here he was. Faltering, at the last.

“Very good,” said the Dragon Queen, though her voice was distant, as if from very far away. Then she breathed a word.

And his right arm erupted in fire.

More than anything else, later, he would remember the smell. For all his face was turned to his right, he only caught a glimpse of the flame engulfing his arm before his vision was washed out in a bright flash of white. He probably screamed, but he didn’t remember it. What he remembered was the scent of it. The aroma of scorched cotton as his sleeve caught alight and immediately turned to smoke. The stench of cooking meat, burning too long and too hot until it became charcoal.

It had to have hurt, but he didn’t really remember that, either, beyond the initial burst of all-encompassing agony. Too much, all at once, the nerves almost immediately seared away to nothing. Then the flesh. Then the bone.

And then the fire was gone, and so was his arm. Nothing left but a pile of ash, and the smell.

It still didn’t hurt. But even though he couldn’t stop sweating, he felt very, very cold.

Was that ironic? He couldn’t remember.

What was that sound?

Was that sobbing?

Was he _crying_?

“Pathetic,” sneered Atma, though it took Viren a moment to realize the word was actually being vocalized and wasn’t just from his own thoughts.

“Mm,” said the Dragon Queen, neither agreeing nor disagreeing. “Remove that, will you Atma? I have no use for it until my son returns.”

“Of course, my queen,” and then Viren was being lifted off the floor. Dragged back down the stairs, the way lit only faintly by torchlight.

He didn’t even feel his body hit the ground as Atma tossed him carelessly into a room, barely heard it as she locked the door behind him. There were words said outside; he did not hear them.

He did not hear much of anything. It was all he could do to curl around the absence of where his right arm used to be and try to breathe, shivering alone in the dark.


	7. Chapter 7

He did not know how long he lay there. Time… warped, oddly, when there was nothing to mark its passage. It could have been hours. Days.

Realistically, probably about ten minutes had passed when he heard new voices speak outside.

Except not new. Not really.

“Open the door.” Pruktha had a unique way of sounding both like he was undergoing his current task under protest but would also smash your head open against the wall if you tried to stop him. Also like he didn’t blink enough. Viren wasn’t sure how Pruktha managed to sound like someone who didn’t blink enough, yet somehow he could picture the elf’s deadeye stare in his mind’s eye even now.

There was the faint clinking of armor as one of the guards outside his cell shifted uneasily. “Are you… here on orders from the queen?”

“The queen wants the human alive until her son returns,” said Dashou, which was a misdirect if Viren had ever heard one. “If he doesn’t get medical attention in the next half an hour, he will be dead before the sun sets. If you won’t let us in, you need to call the healer on staff immediately.”

Another clink of armor. “The queen…”

“You’re the team who brought the Dark Mage in, aren’t you?” said the other guard.

“Yes,” said Dashou. “And we do not want to see our work go to waste.”

“Of course not,” said the other guard affably, and there was more rustling before the door swung open with a creak, the faint protests of the first guard quickly trailing off as four Moonshadow elves walked into Viren’s cell and closed the door behind them, their eyes glowing faintly in the dark.

Viren had suffered through a number of nightmares that had begun almost exactly like this. They paled in comparison to his current, lived reality, so he just stared listlessly at the pair of dark yellow eyes he was fairly sure were Liyam’s, which squinted briefly down at him before widening. “Wow, he… doesn’t look very good.”

“He’s gone into shock,” said Dashou. “Pruktha, how can we help?”

The pair of eyes that were Pruktha’s had already started moving, kneeling to Viren’s right before placing a hand on his forehead so hot that it nearly _burned_. Viren was flinching away even as his brain processed the nonsensicality of it—all of the Moonshadow elves had a slightly lower body temperature than him—before Pruktha’s hand moved to push his right shoulder down into the stone, forcing him flat, and the elf’s other hand started to rub something into the stump where his right arm used to be.

The stinging was unfortunately familiar—more pureberries—except it didn’t even register beyond another discordant note against the background of noise that currently played a cacophony across his mind. It was only after Pruktha was finished with the pureberries and had begun wrapping Viren’s shoulder in bandages did he finally answer Dashou’s question. “Soothleaf?”

“He drank the last of it in the catacombs,” said Dashou.

There was a pause as Pruktha seemed to processed this, his hands mechanically tying off the bandages. “Blankets. All of them. And something to elevate his feet.”

“… There isn’t really anything in here,” said Liyam.

“I’ve gotta admit, I’m kind of confused,” said Yaeger. “We did our job, right? We got the Dark Mage back here. If he dies on the Sunfire elves’ watch, that’s their problem, not ours.”

Dashou was already pulling something out of her bag. “If you aren’t going to help, you can leave.”

There was a pause. Then the cell door was shoved open and just as quickly closed as Yaeger walked out.

“Pruktha,” Dashou continued, as if nothing had happened, “Here’s my traveling blanket.”

Some sounds of scrabbling ensued. “Mine too,” said Liyam.

“Dashou, legs,” said Pruktha, and there was a stomach-turning few moments where Viren felt hands slide around his ankles and behind his neck and upper back before he was picked up bodily before being placed almost immediately back down, this time on a marginally softer, warmer surface. The weight of several more blankets fell upon him a couple of seconds later.

Then there was silence.

“So… what now?” asked Liyam.

“Will come back tomorrow to change bandages,” said Pruktha, levering himself near soundlessly back to his feet at Viren’s side.

“… That’s it?” said Liyam. “He hasn’t said anything since we came in here. Isn’t that bad?”

“Not hospital. Not _doctor_ ,” said Pruktha, sounding almost angry, before he turned and the cell door quickly opened and closed yet again.

“But,” said Liyam plaintively, in what seemed to be in the direction of the door. “There has to be- he can barely _see_ in here. Can’t we-”

“Liyam,” said Dashou. “We have done all we can, and more than was asked. Never for a second forget what we are. Do not invite your own ruin.” Then, more gently: “We must go. Runaan is waiting for us.”

Liyam was blinking oddly quickly. He turned and looked down at Viren one more time before looking away and heading out the door without another word, Dashou right behind him.

And like that, Viren was alone again.

For about three minutes.

“Do you guys have any idea how hard it is to find an empty crate down here?” said Yaeger, shouldering open the door past the faint protests of the guards. “I had to go up three floors to storage- ah fuck.”

“I told you, your _turma’s_ already left,” said guard number one.

“… Yeah well, still got this crate, don’t I?” said Yaeger, and shoulder checked the door closed behind him before leaning back against it with a sigh. “By the moon, you are such an inconvenient bastard, Dark Mage. Pathetic, too. I mean, _look_ at you. Not gonna be doing a lot of Dark Magic now.”

Yaeger’s casual insults were the least stressful thing Viren had dealt with in days. It was almost soothing. He had to swallow twice before he managed, his voice still coming out in a rasp, “My handwriting was never that good anyway.”

Yaeger froze for a second before chuckling under his breath, dropping the crate somewhere next to Viren’s feet before crouching to sit on it. “So you’re still somewhere in there after all.”

“I have no idea why you’re surprised,” said Viren. “I’ve lost an arm, I wasn’t dealt a brain injury.” He expected to feel more grief at voicing what had happened to him, but even saying it aloud, everything still felt very, very far away.

“Yeah,” said Yaeger, though quieter now; quieter than Viren had ever heard the elf talk before, “I know. I think you know what’s coming better than my team.” Yaeger shifted on the crate. “Well, Pruktha and Liyam, anyway. Idiots, both of them. Keeping you alive just to be the prince’s first prey is no kindness. Our only mercy is at the end of a blade.”

“Here to wield some mercy, then?” Viren asked.

Yaeger tilted his head to the side. “Do you want me to?”

“Does it matter?” Viren asked.

Yaeger chuckled. “I suppose not.” He paused. “Considered it. But now my team would be blamed if you died before the prince showed up. And no offense, but I like them better than you.”

“Logical,” said Viren, and closed his eyes.

There was a moment of silence, then Viren heard a scraping sound before he felt his ankles being grabbed again and placed on top of the crate.

It was only inches from his ear that he heard Yaeger murmur, “If the prince takes too long with you, Dark Mage… I’ll try and find a way to end it.”

“How gracious of you,” Viren murmured back, and almost meant it.

\--*--

He did not die in the night. Unfortunately.

He knew this because the last of the soothleaf wore off in the middle of it and he woke up to his left knee feeling like someone had stabbed a knife into the tendons and twisted. Which- alright, fine, so he had staggered thirty miles on it in the past two days, but he had also had his _right arm burned off_. By all rights it should have been _that_ which woke him up, but it instead remained as it had since the moment he lost it: an absence, noticeable for only what wasn’t instead of what was.

And then there was his knee, which managed to bend about ten degrees before making a grinding noise and the nerves in his left leg seized all the way up to his hip. And proceeded to stay that way for the next five hours.

“You couldn’t have taken the leg, could you,” Viren said to his empty cell. He might have actually thanked her for it.

\--*--

It actually wasn’t that difficult to track the passage of time. Pruktha always visited in the afternoon, ever wordless and on the edge on explosive anger even as he brusquely cleaned the stump of Viren’s arm and rewrapped his bandages, and while Viren’s ability to snap his fingers with his left hand was intermittent, the Torch spell always caught eventually, and nightfall was always easy to gauge as the time when the spell went from working about half the time to not working at all.

Somewhere around day three in the dungeons, it seemed to occur to someone that they should interrogate him while they had the chance, so he spent that morning chained to a ring in the floor of his cell while a Sunfire elf mage burned the _Veritas_ rune into the air before running through a list of questions.

Except as it turned out, while the spell seemed to work as intended—his breath coming out in a dark red fog when he lied—they obviously hadn’t sent their best interrogator for the job. Or perhaps they hadn’t sent an interrogator at all, the Sunfire mage looking uncomfortable from the moment she stepped into the cell, hurrying through her questions without seeming to care much about the answers.

Which was fortunate, because the blind spots to the _Veritas_ spell were so obvious that Viren could hardly have avoided them had he tried. When he was asked about Katolis’ troop numbers, “I don’t know,” his breath came out without slightest hint of red. Because exact numbers changed constantly, though at last count the standing military was roughly four hundred eleven thousand split into eight standing armies, with about twice that in reserves. “The king had other advisors on military matters.” Like the generals of those armies.

To which in response the Sunfire mage actually looked _relieved_ and proceeded to skip all the military-related questions entirely. Didn’t push. Didn’t dig any further.

It was all such an obvious formality that Viren actually wondered why they bothered.

Pruktha certainly seemed irritated about it, his brow furrowed as he entered the cell right after the Sunfire elves left and immediately rubbing pureberry juice into the abrasions left by the chains.

“I think tetanus is the least of my concerns,” Viren said to him, which just seemed to make Pruktha scowl and rub even harder.

Honestly, once his knee had recovered enough around day four for him to start staggering around on it, the worst part was the waiting. He had spent so much of his time in Katolis alone in a windowless dungeon anyway that the location itself didn’t elicit any particular amount of dread—if anything it was less damp and smelled better than he was used to—and they fed him twice a day, a sort of porridge with chunks of freshly-cooked fruit and cinnamon swirled in it that just made it sort of painfully obvious that the worst Xadia had to offer was nearly on par with Katolis’ best.

So yes, it was definitely the waiting. Like every time he had been called to audience with Harrow and then forced to sit outside for an hour—Harrow’s not-so-subtle way of indicating his displeasure—combined into one excruciating, unending ordeal. Nothing to do but sit and stew over what was coming. He didn’t even have a book with him, which had been his usual recourse once he figured out the patterns of Harrow’s flashes of temper—while for some reason it had just made Harrow angrier to order him into his chambers to find Viren had spent the past hour working, finding him with one of Claudia’s novels instead had acted as a sort of confusion offensive that always did a lot more to dissipate Harrow’s ire than anything Viren ever said.

(“You can’t actually be reading this.”

“Well that just shows you haven’t bothered reading past Book Two, my king. Athene and Baldir’s relationship becomes a lot more nuanced after they slay the Gorgalisk-”

“Oh come on, even I know that monster is just made up.”

“That’s why it’s called _fiction_ , Harrow.”)

They also hadn’t been the worst way to kill an hour. At the very least it gave- had given- him and Claudia something else to talk about over breakfast.

But the Sunfire elves had refused him books, and pens and paper, and anything else.

So he had been left alone with his thoughts.

His thoughts were terrible company, as of late.

“I don’t suppose you have any novels you’d be willing to lend me?”

Pruktha’s withering look was enough to remind Viren of what Moonshadow elves thought of such ‘frivolities.’

“… Manuals on weapons care?”

“… We teach through experience,” Pruktha grunted, after a moment. “Not books.”

“I am not getting the more flattering picture of elven literacy,” said Viren, not bothering to wince as Pruktha peeled back his bandages.

“All elves can read,” said Pruktha. “Can all humans?”

Considering the short answer to that question was ‘no’ (and the long answer concerned a much more involved conversation about the human diaspora and the downsides of centralization of government than Viren was willing to get into with an elf), Viren just shrugged in response.

Which still left him without anything to do.

The elves couldn’t have come up with a more effective torture had they tried.

\--*--

The Dragon Queen’s stormriders returned with the Dragon Prince and Runaan’s niece on Viren’s seventh day in Xadia.

Or at least that’s when Viren found out about it, the cell door opening to a full team of Sunfire elves. Familiar Sunfire elves.

“Always a pleasure to see you, Atma,” Viren said dryly from his seat on Yaeger’s crate, his left leg stretched out before him; he had yet to completely readjust to his new center of balance from losing over eight pounds of weight on his right side, and he wasn’t completely confident in his ability to walk in straight lines.

Atma, for her part, stared down at him with her usual lip curl before giving a dismissive hand gesture, and two of her team moved to haul him to his feet, the one on the right visibly hesitating before just grabbing him by his shoulder and belt.

“My apologies,” Viren said, completely insincerely, “I understand how recent events might have made your job a bit more difficult-”

“Shut it, human,” Atma said coldly.

Viren sneered. “No.” At which point Atma backhanded him hard enough that he actually felt blood begin to pool in his mouth, dripping down from where his teeth had torn open his cheek. “… Ow,” Viren said, then spat the blood in Atma’s face.

He did not really remember the ten minutes that followed, coming to his senses somewhere in a side corridor being peered at closely by a green-eyed Moonshadow elf he didn’t recognize. “My, my, captain, you did lose your temper, didn’t you?”

“Just make him presentable,” said Atma from somewhere off to the side. “And keep him _quiet_.”

“Of course,” said the Moonshadow elf, before sketching two runes less than an inch from the tip of Viren’s nose before whispering in a low voice, “ _Dissimulo_. _Silentium_.”

Viren wasn’t so addled as to not notice that he could no longer hear his own breathing, though it was only as he raised his left hand to try and shove the Moonshadow elf away did he realize that his left arm was tied quite securely to his chest, his fingers wrapped in intricate knots and immoveable.

Atma, for her part, did not sound pleased as she said, “You can still see his arm is missing.”

“My apologies, captain,” said the Moonshadow Illusionist with a smile, and Viren realized suddenly that they hated Atma almost as much as Viren himself did, “Was I supposed to hide the work of our illustrious queen as well as your own?”

“… It’s good enough,” said Atma, and like that Viren found himself being dragged again, out of the interior corridor almost immediately into light, and he realized that he had been less than fifty feet from the Dragon Queen’s throne room.

This realization was almost immediately overshadowed when his eyes alighted on a pale blue figure the size of a large cat curled into a dejected-looking circle in front of the Dragon Queen, which was the exact second he found out the Dragon Prince had already _hatched_.

Viren felt the bottom drop out of his stomach. Well. Alright then.

And here he’d thought they were just dragging him somewhere to be interrogated by someone who actually knew what they were doing. He’d really expected at least a month or two of languishing in the dungeons before they found a storm large enough to hatch a Sky Archdragon.

Apparently not.

This time when he was thrown to the ground in front of the Dragon Queen, he lacked anything to stop his fall except his left shoulder, which proved inadequately prepared for the responsibility as his head continued its downward trajectory. Then came to a sudden stop, less than an inch from the stone floor.

“Nice catch,” came Yaeger’s voice from somewhere off to the left before being hastily shushed by Liyam.

Runaan did not seem to notice one way or the other, lowering him the rest of the way before releasing the collar of his shirt and turning and walking back towards his team, never once looking at Viren directly.

“Thank you, Runaan,” came the Dragon Queen’s air-vibrating rumble. “Atma, do tell your _turma_ to be more careful in the future. Humans are such fragile things.”

“Of course, my queen,” said the Sunfire elf, her voice exceedingly formal.

“Now then,” continued the Dragon Queen, “My darling-”

Viren had decided and then instantly resigned himself to the fact that his participation was at best irrelevant to the proceedings and more likely than not would just get him punched in the jaw again. Which he would have been able to live with, except that his only remaining arm was still bound and he couldn’t talk, which didn’t leave him a lot of options for actually doing something productive.

When combined with the fact that he couldn’t see much from his position flat on his face, he was distracting himself from what was coming by studying the intricate gold inlay in the red marbled floor. It was very delicately done. Nice sunburst pattern. Smooth. Probably very easy to clean.

Except after just a few seconds he couldn’t see it anymore, as his entire field of vision was encompassed by a pair of sky blue eyes. Which proceeded to chirp at him.

“Um…” came a voice he didn’t recognize. “Did you… want me to continue translating, my queen?”

“Of course I do,” said the queen, her voice a crack of lightning. “Darling, come back over here, will you?”

The eyes blinked. Then chirped again.

“Hi! What’s your name?”

“That’s the Dark Mage, darling. The one I told you about.”

The eyes blinked again. Then rotated as the Dragon Prince turned his head upside down before the rest of his body followed, flopping over on his back with the sound of scales scratching over polished stone. “He looks like a human. This human killed daddy?”

“Yes, darling. This human killed your father.”

The eyes blinked again. “That’s sad.”

“Yes, darling. It was a sad day for all of us.”

“Ezran and Callum said the war between the humans and Xadia has killed a lot of daddies and mommies.”

And like that, every drop of Viren’s studied apathy evaporated into nothing.

It proved insanely difficult to shove himself to his knees on a smooth stone floor with only one bound arm to work with, and he didn’t even get that far before one of the Sunfire elves shoved him back on his face again.

Viren couldn’t bring himself to care much. It wasn’t like the rise in elevation would have accomplished anything anyway. “You know the princes?” Viren asked the Dragon Prince.

Tried to ask the Dragon Prince.

Completely failed to ask the Dragon Prince, no sound making its way out of his mouth at all.

Viren gritted his teeth, trying not to hyperventilate. Oh dragons (and never had that curse seemed more apt), the Dragon Prince had met the princes.

The princes, who were supposed to be at the Banther Lodge, if not already back at Katolis Castle.

The princes, of whom he had seen last storming up to him with an unusually mulish expression and telling him that _he knew what he did_.

They couldn’t have been that stupid.

… Never mind, Callum was exactly that stupid, and Ezran would have seen the chance to help a small, cute, helpless thing and jumped in feet first.

The Dragon Queen had the princes. The Dragon Queen had _Harrow’s sons_.

For his part, the Dragon Prince was frowning at him, still upside down. “What’s wrong?” Then the Dragon Prince squinted before his eyes dilated. “Oh! I see.” Then he extended his claws and took a swipe at Viren’s neck.

It would have been both the most ignominious and most apropos way to die. Throat slit by a baby dragon so young it couldn’t yet communicate without the help of an Earthwalker elf. Executed by the sole child and heir of Thunder.

Except the Dragon Prince’s claws fell short by over an inch, catching on something invisible in the air between them. The Dragon Prince stuck out his lower jaw in a pout, then gave one hard tug, and all at once Viren could hear the sound of his breath again in his ears.

“Darling,” the Dragon Queen said again, and the Dragon Prince, still on his back, tilted his head up to look at her.

“What is it, mommy?”

“You did hear what I said about this human, didn’t you?”

The Dragon Prince flopped flat again. “Yup! He killed daddy.”

“Yes, darling. He did. He did the most terrible thing someone could ever do.”

“Which Ezran and Callum had nothing to do with,” said Viren.

“He also took you from me,” said the Dragon Queen, ignoring Viren entirely. “If it hadn’t been for young Rayla, you might never have found your way back to me.”

“I like Rayla!” said the Dragon Prince.

“Yes, she is a most loyal vassal. But this human committed grave crimes against us. I have taken recompense for what he did to your father; now your own justice must be mete.”

“What does that mean?” said the Dragon Prince.

“It means,” the Dragon Queen said very patiently, “That he was wrong to take you from me. And since he did so, you can do what you like with him.”

“Anything?” asked the Dragon Prince.

“Yes,” said the Dragon Queen. “Absolutely anything you like.”

The Dragon Prince blinked at this, then crinkled his nose in thought. “I… don’t want him to kill any more people.”

Viren could sense the Dragon Queen’s satisfaction even without seeing her face. “Nor do I, my darling.”

“Killing is bad,” the Dragon Prince declared.

That particular sentiment, the Dragon Queen did not seem in a hurry to agree with.

“So,” the Dragon Prince continued, his gaze flitting back to Viren. “If you are here to apologize, you can’t kill any more people.”

What.

“Um,” said Viren, and then, when the Dragon Prince seemed to expect a reply, “… Alright? I won’t… do that.”

“And,” the Dragon Prince continued triumphantly, “You have to teach me! About human stuff. Until I’m big.”

Viren actually felt his brain skid, before stuttering completely to a halt.

What.

_What._

This time, when Viren awkwardly attempted to maneuver himself to his knees, no one stopped him. No one really seemed to be paying attention to him at all, which made sense, because everyone was too busy staring at the tiny dragon in the middle of the floor. Including his mother.

“Darling,” said the Dragon Queen. “That isn’t- this human _killed_ your father.”

The Dragon Prince twisted to scowl up at his mother. “You made Ezran and Callum go home!” Viren felt himself sag in relief; he could only hope a Sun Archdragon incapable of lying to her son and the two princes hadn’t been thrown off the nearest convenient cliff. “You said I couldn’t keep them! But you said I could do anything I wanted with this one! And I want him to teach me about human stuff, like pirates! And stories! And raccoons! And to make me jelly tarts! We don’t have jelly tarts here, I asked this morning!”

“Darling-”

The Dragon Prince scowled even harder. “Is he mine or not?”

By the way the Dragon Queen’s eyes began to glow, she did not like that question very much. “ _Darling_ -”

“My queen,” said a voice off to the side, and the green-eyed Moonshadow Illusionist walked forward before giving a bow. “May I have a private word?”

“… Of course, Zhonya,” said the Dragon Queen, the blue fire in her eyes quickly receding as if it had never been there at all. She turned and walked out onto the south side balcony, the Moonshadow Illusionist at her heels, before the doors slid shut behind them

It was the first time Viren had ever seen the Dragon Queen move. It was a startling reminder of the sheer _size_ of the room, that a fully grown Sun Archdragon had space to turn, that she didn’t even have to duck her head to walk through the doors. The throne room alone had over half the width and height of the entirety of Katolis Castle. Cathedral-like in scope and grandeur, except Opeli’s gods and their housing had never inspired any feelings in Viren other than contempt. So much that needed fixing in the world, to revolve one’s entire existence around beings that weren’t even _real_ seemed the height of ostentatious squander. More time and manpower wasted on a building that had no purpose than on the seat of the entire country’s government, nothing more than a balm to the uneducated masses who feared an existence where the only higher beings wanted nothing more than to see them all dead. Unable to cope with being entirely, utterly alone.

The elves didn’t have this problem, even if the thoughts and movements of their gods were similarly ineffable. Viren found himself glancing over at Runaan as the Dragon Queen and Moonshadow Illusionist stood out on the balcony—the Dragon Prince wrapped up in an obvious pout on the floor—and when their eyes caught, the Moonshadow Assassin’s expression was so clearly a mirror of Viren’s own barely suppressed bewilderment—the fellow feeling so reminiscent of one of the rare moments of empathy he and Amaya had shared when either Harrow or Sarai had announced at a council meeting one of their well-meaning but impractical quests to fix all of humanity’s problems—that Viren couldn’t really muster any antagonism at all, found himself shrugging with a helpless grimace even as Runaan caught his own lapse and turned away with a frown.

The Dragon Prince, for his part, grew quickly tired of sulking and toddled up to Viren again, giving a chirp. When Viren just stared at him blankly, the Dragon Prince turned and glared at the Earthwalker elf translator, then chirped again.

When a desperate look out at the balcony didn’t yield to him any answers, the Earthwalker elf said, hesitantly, “He wants to know how good you are at making jelly tarts.”

“I’m better at cakes,” said Viren flatly. Which was just as well; neither Claudia nor Soren liked pastry very-

Damn it. _Damn it_. Not now.

The Dragon Prince chirped again.

“He wants to know what cake is.”

For some reason it was _that_ —being asked to explain cake to a baby dragon while its mother discussed his execution less than one hundred feet away—which pushed everything past the point of surrealism and straight into farcical horror show.  “Why do _I_ need to explain what cake is?” Viren snapped at the Earthwalker elf. “ _You_ explain what cake is!”

“I don’t _know_ what cake is!” the Earthwalker elf snapped back.

Viren stared at the Earthwalker elf incredulously. “You’re telling me humans invented _cake_?”

The Dragon Prince blinked, then chirped again.

“It’s a kind of sweet bread that you don’t knead very much to prevent it from becoming too chewy,” Viren said to the baby dragon, giving up both his protests and most of his existence as a job badly done. “Though if I also have to explain bread to you, I am going to need more than the thirty seconds I have left before your mother burns me alive.”

“Let me allay your fears, Dark Mage,” said the Dragon Queen as the balcony doors slid open, the thick glass apparently doing absolutely nothing to stop her from overhearing their conversation. “Zhonya’s unique insights have convinced me of the wisdom of my son’s plan.

“We have been separated from the humans for a millennium,” the Dragon Queen continued, her gaze shifting to sweep over her court. “And they seemed at worst a mild annoyance for most of that time. But recent events have done much to convince me that the sun is setting on that era of history, and a new one is soon to dawn. I had my own thoughts on the color of that sunrise, but… it is my son, and not I, who heralds that new beginning.

“He has his own thoughts on how we might deal with the human kingdoms. And he has a decade to consider his choices, before he is ready to don his father’s crown.

“You want a human pet, my darling?”

The Dragon Queen’s head didn’t move, but Viren could clearly track as her pupils shifted downwards to look at him, and she showed every single one of her teeth even as the air between them shimmered. “I cannot think of one better to show you what humans are _truly_ like.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the wait. I hit a wall that I didn't manage to figure a way over until I saw some of Season 2, which while I didn't actually like a lot of it *did* present me with a solution to my plot dilemma.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [夏时令 Daylight Savings](https://archiveofourown.org/works/16147775) by [SoManySpaceShips](https://archiveofourown.org/users/SoManySpaceShips/pseuds/SoManySpaceShips)




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